


a language that i never knew existed before

by hi_raeth



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canon Compliant, Christmas, Established Relationship, Exes, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Friends to Lovers, Getting Back Together, Jedi!Rey, Jedi/Senator AU, Married Reylo, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Canon, Post-TLJ, Reylo Baby, Senator!Ben, tagging as we go, waffle house au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-09-05 06:15:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 39,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16805077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hi_raeth/pseuds/hi_raeth
Summary: In honor of the holiday season, here's a collection of 25 Reylo ficlets, each based on an uncommon word paired with prompts received over on Tumblr.DAY TWENTY-FIVE: GEZELLIG(adj.) cozy, nice, inviting, pleasant, comfortable; connoting time spent with loved ones or togetherness after a long separationFor... everyone, really. This past year has been such a delight thanks to all of you, and you give me all the warm and fuzzies just as Rey and Ben do. So to close out the collection, here’s a super pointless and fluffy modern AU where Rey misses her first Christmas with Ben as a married couple... or does she?





	1. Fernweh

**Author's Note:**

> **DAY ONE: FERNWEH**  
>  (n.) an ache for distant places; the craving for travel  
> For persimonne, who requested "Fernweh, canonverse, post IX".
> 
> Title taken from Florence + the Machine's _All This And Heaven Too_.

The sun has just begun its slow descent into the horizon by the time Ben finds her, sitting on the Falcon’s ramp with her knees pressed to her chest as she observes the darkening sky.

It’s still so new, so thrilling, to feel his presence at the very edge of her senses and know that it’s real. After a year of cursing the unpredictable, ephemeral nature of their connection, Rey thinks she’ll never get over the fact that he’s actually around now, that she can touch and kiss and hold him whenever she wants, wherever she wants.

Ben climbs up the ramp, having to duck the slightest bit as he does, and comes to sit next to her without hesitation.

“She’s ready to fly again,” Rey tells him with a sigh as she rests her head on his shoulder and he wraps an arm around her waist. It had taken two weeks in a bacta tank for his body to mend itself after the final battle, and another month after that before Rey stopped treating him like a broken thing. Now, though – now Rey rests her whole weight on him, knows and trusts that Ben will bear it for as long as she needs him to.

Ben uses his free hand to pat the ramp almost fondly. “Where to next, Captain?” he murmurs.

There’s no need for hushed voices, for secret whispers – not anymore. But everything’s quiet these days, in the aftermath of a chaos so loud it shattered the whole galaxy. Peace is a new and tenuous thing still, so fragile that it feels like just speaking out loud might be tempting the Force.

The base is quiet too, what little was left of their forces after the fight slowly packing up and leaving behind the place they’d called home for nearly two years. Finn and Rose were amongst the first to leave, though they’d assured her that it was only temporary, only until Finn had a better idea of how to rehabilitate the troopers and Rose had a clear picture of which sectors required disaster relief the most urgently. Poe took off shortly after, trading in his flight suit for the heavy robes of a Senator just as he’d given up his impulsive military strategies for more thoughtful peace-building proposals.

Now she and Ben are amongst the last dozen or so people left, all of them free to go and none of them quite sure what to do with that freedom.

“I don’t know,” Rey admits at long last, Ben quiet and patient by her side as he so often is these days. “I just… all I wanted was you,” she tells him, turns to look him in the eye as she does. “Ever since I left you, all I’ve wanted was you. And now I finally have you, but… but…”

“But there’s more, isn’t there?” Ben asks with the gentlest smile, and she’s reminded only then of the fact that he always, always understands. “We watched the world end and watched it start again, but there’s still so much we haven’t seen.”

“Finn says there are oceans prettier than Ahch-To,” she murmurs hopefully against the bare skin of his collarbone. “Warmer, too.”

Ben pulls her closer, tucks her head under his chin. “I was born near one of those oceans,” he tells her.

She’s known him long enough to know an offer when she hears one. “And I saw a place in a holo once, green as Takodana and blue as Ahch-To,” Rey goes on greedily, raises one hand to press a fingertip to Ben’s temple and show him the memory.

“There’s a house there that belonged to my grandmother,” Ben says.

“And…” she hesitates, drops her hand to ghost her lips across his neck instead. “And this place?”

A dream, from the night before he defected from the First Order and turned the tides of the war: the two of them in a small cottage somewhere green, somewhere cool. A warm bed with rumpled sheets, a kitchen with two mugs, a couch small enough that her feet must rest in his lap in order for her to stretch her legs along the length of the cozy chair. She’s sketching a plant from their garden and he’s reading from a datapad, and every once in a while they both look up to catch each other’s eye and share a secret smile.

The home she’s been looking for all her life, the home he thought lost to him so long ago.

“That,” Ben leans down, nudges her nose with his own to get her to tip her head back. “That I’ve never been to,” he whispers against her lips, “but I’m willing to look for it if you are.”

“I am,” Rey sighs, closes her eyes and lets Ben chase away all thoughts of anything other than him and her and this. When the sun sets they’ll head inside and pack their things, and under the cover of darkness they’ll leave this planet with no fanfare, no farewell. Every nerve in her body hums with excitement and anticipation at the adventure that awaits, at the sights they’ll discover, at the home they’ll find.

But for now… for now Rey lets herself get swept away by the man who’s about to give her the galaxy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They deserve a soft epilogue, don't they?
> 
> First time playing in the post-canon sandbox, hope it was decent! As always, thank you for reading and please don't hesitate to leave a comment below if you liked it or have some thoughts you feel like sharing.
> 
> If you'd like a ficlet of your own this holiday season, [prompt me here!](https://eleanor-writes-stuff.tumblr.com/post/180619997915/december-writing-plans-a-reylo-ficlet-collection)


	2. Cafuné

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **DAY TWO: CAFUNÉ**  
>  (v.) running your fingers through your lover's hair  
> For janenightwork, who requested "Cafuné please! Modern AU if convenient".

_This_ , Rey thinks on a slow Saturday afternoon, _is what they mean by domestic bliss._

She’s lazing on the couch with Ben’s head in her lap, the rest of him stretched out along the length of the chair with his feet dangling over the opposite edge. There’s a movie playing, something Rose recommended to her earlier this week, but Rey tuned it out a while ago in favor of entertaining her own thoughts, and Ben– Ben hadn’t even been paying attention in the first place, flopping into her lap within the first five minutes of the movie with the intention of taking a nap to recover from his week.

“S’nice,” he mumbles, lips warm against the sliver of skin exposed by her short camisole.

Rey snaps out of her reverie, looks down at his closed eyes and peaceful features with a smile. Three years together and she’s still touched by how comfortable he is around her, by how he’s willing to let every single guard down in her presence. “What is?” she asks, dragging her blunt nails down his scalp with the slightest bit of pressure.

Ben makes a sound deep within his chest, a rumbly little thing that gets caught in his throat. If she could get away with it, she’d probably call it a purr. “This. You, me. Nothing else.”

“Yeah,” Rey smiles to herself, combs her fingers through his hair and gathers the length of it so that it spills over her thigh like an inky waterfall. “Yeah, this is nice.”

In the short few months between their first meeting and the day she kissed him to shut him up, Rey used to wonder what his hair would feel like, used to dream of tugging at soft black waves while their lips moved together. Now she cards her hands through it, gently working through a few tangles from last night while Ben burrows deeper into her, warm breath fanning out across her abdomen while his nose nuzzles the skin below her belly button.

Ben drifts back into sleep a few minutes later, and Rey makes a renewed effort at watching the movie, a period piece Rose had lauded for its aesthetics much more than anything else. It’s pleasant enough, watching big, frothy dresses flit across the screen and taking note of all the intricately braided hairstyles, wondering if Ben’s nimble fingers could recreate them.

Wondering if maybe–

“What’re you up to?” Ben mumbles a while later, and she looks down to find him blinking at her with a lazy smile while her hands make a mess of his hair.

Rey stares at her sad, wonky attempt at a braid. Was she supposed to use two strands or three? Ben always uses more than that but then again, Ben is an Alderaanian braid master, trained by none other than his mother. But basic braids use three, don’t they? Except for those _Game of Thrones-_ inspired ones Paige likes to wear sometimes–

“Tried to braid,” she explains to Ben, watching him rub sleep out of his eyes. “Failed.”

He laughs at that, lifts his head from her lap and takes his hair along with him. After an hour of carding through it, Rey’s hand feels oddly bereft without the soft warmth of his curls around her. She watches as Ben quickly locates her snarled mess and tugs his fingers through it with considerably more force than she would.

“Wait, no, let me,” Rey tells him, rises up on her knees and wraps one hand around his shoulder for balance as the other carefully pries his hair free. Ben happily cedes to her, eyes sliding shut as he bends his head for easier access.

“Why were you trying to braid, anyway?” he asks, a smile in his voice. “I thought we agreed that I do the braiding in this relationship.”

“Thought it’d be nice to learn,” Rey shrugs. “Don’t get me wrong,” she assures Ben as the last tangle finally gives in and his curls bounce back into their usual order. “I love that you can do my hair better than anyone else, but this–” she pulls back, gestures at her failed attempt, “–is quite ridiculous, you have to admit. I’m not even sure how many sections I’m supposed to use.”

Ben gathers her into his lap, laughs as he nuzzles the curve of her shoulder. “Three, sweetheart. Let’s start with three.” He moves his legs up to hold her in place, knees pressed against her back, and Rey watches as he gathers her hair and brings it over her shoulder.

“You’ll teach me?” she asks eagerly as Ben sets aside a fistful of hair and begin to section it.

“You clearly need a teacher,” he says with a grin, eyes dancing with mirth. “Besides, I’ll take any excuse to play with your hair. Now, pay attention, Mrs. Solo.”

She leans back into his knees, watches him in his element. When pressed to recall the impromptu demonstration later on, Rey will find that very little of what she remembers from this moment is braid-related.

But for now, she’s happy to sit back and let her husband run his hands through her hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So apparently I'm incapable of writing about Reylo and hair without slipping in some of that wholesome braid kink goodness. Oops.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and as always, please don't hesitate to leave a comment below! If you'd like a ficlet of your own for the holiday season, [prompt me here!](https://eleanor-writes-stuff.tumblr.com/post/180619997915/december-writing-plans-a-reylo-ficlet-collection)


	3. Numinous

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **DAY THREE: NUMINOUS**  
>  (adj.) describing an experience that makes you fearful yet fascinated, awed yet attracted - the powerful, personal feeling of being overwhelmed and inspired  
> For leofgyth, who requested a medieval AU.

A commotion rages outside his chambers.

After months of nothing but the hurried steps of servants coming to and fro, after years of listening for the heavy march of Snoke and his entourage, Kylo now finds his senses assaulted by a cacophony of metal on metal, battle cries turning into gurgled last breaths with sinister abruptness, the telling _thud_ of bodies falling to the ground.

He reaches for the broadsword hidden underneath his mattress just as the rusty deadbolts outside his door begin to slide out of the way, steps into position as the heavy door swings open to reveal–

“Prince Benjamin?” a feminine voice asks – a feminine voice coming from the decidedly feminine form standing just beyond his threshold, scratched armor hiding her curves from view as the sword by her side drips with the blood of his guards, her victims.

“The prince died a long time ago,” Kylo informs her coldly, shakes off his bewilderment to point his sword at her. “Why have you come here? Why stage an attack on the most heavily fortified tower of His Majesty’s castle?”

“Most heavily–?” the woman echoes, her brow lined with confusion. “Your precious Majesty assigned you not half a dozen guards, dear prince. And that _is_ who you are, is it not?” she asks, though he senses no question in her assured tone as she cocks her head at him. “Benjamin of Alderaan, you are impossible to mistake.”

He nearly falters in his stance as she steps into his room and shuts the door behind her, gives him a wide berth as she crosses the room to inspect the sole window in his tower. “ _What_ –” he sputters, as discomfited by her words as he is by the heat rushing to his ears. “What is _that_ supposed to mean? And what are you _doing_ , your presence is not–”

“Oh,” his uninvited guest turns to him with a raised brow, looks him in the eye as she sheathes her sword. “Do you mean to say that I am not welcome here, Your Highness? Fine way to welcome your betrothed after she risked life and limb to rescue you,” she huffs, and turns her back on him as Kylo drops his sword to the ground with a clatter.

“My– you claim–” he closes his eyes, centers himself with a deep breath. “I am betrothed to none, my lady. Whatever this scheme of yours–”

“Of your lady mother’s,” the woman amends as she moves to remove her helm, and his breath catches as a waterfall of chestnut curls cascades down her back. Even with the matter of his dear old mother’s involvement at hand, Kylo finds he can hardly spare any concern for his current situation as his supposed fiancée turns around and offers him his first glimpse of her.

With her eyes gold as the sun and green as the forest, her skin incandescent as if lit from within, her delicate lips pulling into an irreverent curve at his stunned perusal…

Kylo shakes his head, forces a scowl onto his face. What cruel trickery, to deceive him into thinking anything so beautiful, so ethereal could ever be his. “Where did she find you then, my mother the Queen? Plucked you from a neighboring kingdom, I assume? Or perhaps a distant one, rumored to have the riches and the might to defeat her sworn enemy and steal back her poor, lost son all so that she can use me to secure an alliance with your father the King.”

“Me, a princess?” his knight snorts in a most unladylike manner. “Your mother found me in _Jakku_ , toiling away in the wastelands just like any other penniless orphan. Word of my swordsmanship had carved a path to her, and she presented me to the court as a long-lost cousin of yours in order to hide my true purpose there. When rumors forced her hand, she announced our betrothal in order to keep the kingdom distracted and the court appeased. Now, if you’re quite done with your interrogation, Your Worshipfulness–”

In the distance, a dissonant chorus of panicked exclamations echoes off the winding stairs leading to his chambers. A familiar voice rises above the din to establish its dominance, the unmistakable sound of Armitage Hux’s crisp accent issuing a chilling command.

“Take no prisoners! The King has ordered that not a soul be allowed to escape.”

“But my lord, the prince–”

“ _Not. A. Soul._ ”

He returns to his senses to find his knight tugging at his hand, her earlier composure nowhere to be found. “We have to go,” she urges him, pulls him towards the window. “ _Now_.”

“But there is only one–”

She produces a thick coil of rope from her side, secures one end to his bedpost before she throws the rest out the window.

“Are you _mad_?” Kylo demands as the heavy footfalls of Hux and his platoon grow ever closer.

“I single-handedly snuck into enemy territory to rescue a man I’ve never met, what do you think?” she retorts, and before he can puzzle out a way to answer that she surprises him with a slap to the back of his thigh. “Quit dawdling! Unless you’d like your dear friend Hux’s face to be the last you ever see, I suggest you heft your princely arse out the window and _climb_.”

Kylo is barely afforded the chance to be scandalized before the chilling sound of rusted metal reaches their ears.

“Go!” his knight commands as the heavy door swings open, and he jumps up the ledge without thought, knows instinctively that she will not leave before him and there is no longer any time to waste.

“ _Ren_ ,” Hux sneers as he and his men file into the room. “I should have known I would find you a willing participant in this–”

Faster than anything Kylo has ever witnessed, she bends down to produce a dagger from her boot and sinks it between Hux’s eyes with deadly accuracy. The stunned silence that follows allows her the chance to dispatch of three more men before the rest of the platoon shakes off their collective shock, and in a split-second decision Kylo hops down from the ledge, races across the room to retrieve his broadsword and join the battle.

“To me!” her voice calls to him above the chaos, and he cuts down two more men standing in his way before he finds himself back-to-back with his knight, _his betrothed_ , who moves in a dance as deadly as it is beautiful, as brutal as it is exquisite.

Time ceases to exist. The rest of the world falls away. There is no physical exertion, no despair, no fear at the treason he is committing in this very second and the consequences that will doubtlessly follow. There is only him and her and _them_ until every last soldier has fallen to the ground, until the tower lapses into eerie silence.

“We _must_ go,” his knight declares as soon as the last body crumples to the ground, and she pauses only to sheath her sword before she takes hold of his hand and pulls him to the window once more. “Up you go, no time to waste–”

For all her deadly precision, her incredible strength, she cannot move a man rooted to the spot and weighed down by emotions bigger than the both of them.

“ _What_?” she demands with a scowl when she catches sight of his wide-eyed look, his parted lips, his heaving chest.

His life as he knows it is over, the future is an overwhelming unknown, and yet… and yet there is only one thought running through his mind. “I think,” Kylo rasps, his voice hoarse from war cries, “you are the single most extraordinary person I have _ever_ encountered.”

She rolls her eyes, pushes him towards the ledge. “Now is _not_ the time, beloved.”

Kylo pulls himself up, wraps both hands around the thick rope. “On the contrary, I think–” When her words reach his brain, he nearly lets go of his lifeline. “What did you just call me?”

“Well, you seem averse to your given name and I am _not_ referring to you by that idiotic moniker–”

“You–” his voice dies in his throat as she hefts herself over the ledge and motions for him to begin his downward climb. “You may address me as Ben… if it pleases you.”

“It does, _Ben_ ,” she tells him, turns to bless him with a smile over her shoulder. “And you may call me Rey. Pleased to meet you, what fun we’ve had, I absolutely cannot wait to get to know you, now _go_.”

He does as she commands, and the two of them make their gradual climb down his prison tower in silence. “Rey,” Kylo whispers to himself, rolls her name on his tongue and tests the weight of it. Incredible, that three short letters and a slip of a woman should carry the power to so irrevocably change his life in the span of mere minutes.

But with his knight by his side, Kylo finds he is prepared to take on any change, any challenge the gods can throw at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I... I _cannot_ medieval, y’all. I really can’t. I’m so sorry, I promise I tried.
> 
> Also, I was doing so well with the word limit but then this happened. Today’s ‘ficlet’ clocks in at a little over fifteen hundred words. Oops.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading and please don’t hesitate to leave a comment if you have any thoughts you'd like to share!


	4. Mamihlapinatapai

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **DAY FOUR: MAMIHLAPINATAPAI**  
>  (n.) a look shared by two people, each wishing that the other would initiate something they both desire but which neither wants to begin  
> For strawberrycupcakehuckleberrypie, who requested a Force Bond setting.

Rey knows what it’s like to have her skin prickle with awareness, to feel a weight on her back as eyes follow her every move.

Growing up on Jakku, she learned early on how to identify the glares of someone going through a bad day, someone looking to pick a fight in the marketplace and saddle her with the blame. She learned to look out for the slight narrowing of suspicious eyes that foretells an accusation of cheating, the shifty look of someone about to offer her a bad deal, the watchful gaze of another scavenger hoping to follow her to one of her wrecks.

So yes, Rey knows what it’s like to have someone following her every move, to have eyes burning a hole into her back–

But this, this is something else entirely.

The Bond connects them when she’s on her way to meetings, when she’s trying to sleep at night, when she’s meditating in the forest. He watches her through it all – keeps pace with her as she walks, perches on the side of her bed, sits down next to her on the ground – and there’s no escaping the burn of his eyes on her, urging her to meet his gaze.

Rey thinks of the last time she did and squeezes her eyes shut instead.

It gets worse when he starts talking.

“Rey,” he whispers two months after Crait, grows anxious when she rushes down the hallway in a futile attempt to put distance between them. “Rey, don’t run from– Rey, stop! Don’t turn your back on me! _Rey_!” he screams, a jagged, broken thing, and behind her she hears the crackle of his saber coming to life, the sound of destruction and anger and hurt.

A few days later, she walks into her room to hear the sound of running water. In her haste to avoid his gaze she drops her eyes somewhere infinitely more dangerous instead, and the quiet huff of amusement she hears from him is something out of a dream that can never come true, a future he’s denied them.

“Sweetheart,” he says, and she can _hear_ the smirk in his voice, longs to look up and replace her last memory of him with that instead. “My eyes are up here.”

Panic grips her by the throat, and for a second Rey thinks it’s hers, thinks turning her back to him will help. It’s only when she hears the water abruptly cut off that she realizes the panic is his, that a simple memory has struck fear into the heart of the Supreme Leader and cut him wide open. Rey ventures further into their Bond, catches a glimpse of–

Han, younger than she ever knew him, in an outfit so unlike anything he’d ever pick, smirking at Leia with barely a streak of grey in her hair, her head tilted to the side in consideration as her eyes sweep up and down her husband’s frame until he chuckles, pulls her attention back to his knowing smirk and tells her, in the exact same tone his son just used, _sweetheart, my eyes are up here._

For the first time since that disastrous day, Rey finds her voice. “Oh, Ben–” she murmurs unthinkingly, turns back to him knowing only that she cannot bear to do nothing about the pain setting him on fire with guilt–

“ _Don’t_ ,” he snarls and slams the connection shut, but that doesn't keep his grief from clouding her mind for the rest of the day.

The least painful moments come late at night, when she staggers into her room after a full day’s work and finds him already asleep in her bed. She’s eager, _starved_ for the quiet comfort of his presence without the danger of it. Rey creeps into her bathroom to do what she must as quickly as she can, and a wave of relief washes through her when she opens her door to find him still there, still asleep.

The cot is too small for the both of them but she climbs in anyway, snakes her arms around him like the needy child neither of them were allowed to be and presses her forehead to the back of his neck. Her eyelids grow heavy, and Rey is just about to surrender to the pull of sleep when–

“Why won’t you look at me?” he whispers into the night, his voice smaller than she’s ever heard it.

It’s nothing like the white-hot pain of the other day, but she feels his hurt anyway, the ache of rejection and loneliness and longing that has settled deep within his very bones. It’s a familiar pain, one she knows better than anyone else, and for that alone she finds herself telling him the truth.

“I’m afraid of what I’ll see,” she murmurs, lips brushing the bare skin of his back. Through the Bond she feeds him her last memory of Crait, of him on one knee with weariness weighing his shoulders down and hurt dimming his eyes, the resignation in him as she closed the door, the fierce longing that called to its counterpart in her. “I’m afraid of _that_.”

Ben moves in her arms, and try as she might she can’t keep him in place, can’t stop him from turning around. Rey can only squeeze her eyes shut and hope to ignore the burn, the pull of his gaze.

“Don’t be afraid,” he whispers, and beneath the hand that’s landed on his chest she can feel the erratic beat of his heart, the shaky breath rattling around in his lungs. “Please, Rey, I just… I need to know. I need to see it. I need to see you.”

An image, _his_ last memory of Crait: her on the Falcon, luminous after channeling the Force, looking down at him in all his broken glory and hesitating even after everything he’d done that day, everything he’d put her through, and it was in that moment of hesitation that his heart fractured, that he realized–

“I’m sorry,” Ben says in a broken voice, tightens his grip around her. “Rey, I’m sorry, it was a mistake, it was all a mistake, _cyar’ika_ –”

It’s been three months since Crait, three months of her avoiding his eyes to deny what he’s just put into words. A lump forms in her throat, a swell of emotions she’s tried so hard to keep hidden within her heart, and Rey finally, finally opens her eyes to find him waiting for her.

“ _Ben_ ,” she sobs, blinking away a wave of tears to get her first look at him since Crait. In his eyes she sees everything she’s been so afraid of, everything she wants but can never have, not while they’re still separated by the galaxy between them.

He draws a sharp breath, and Rey knows he sees all of it in her too, knows there's no going back from this.

“What are we going to _do_?” she asks as he brings one trembling hand up to curve around her cheek, a warmth she cannot help but press into.

Ben closes his eyes, exhales on a shudder before he presses his lips to her forehead. “I don’t know, sweetheart,” he admits, and she can feel his helplessness, his despair, his resolve. “I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out.”

Rey tilts her head back, waits until Ben opens his eyes again. The longing in them still takes her breath away, but it’s easier to bear now that she can no longer deny it, now that she knows he can’t either.

“Promise me,” she whispers as she reaches up to draw him back down. “Promise me it’ll be different this time, Ben, promise me you won’t–” she can’t say it, can’t put into words the way he made her feel that day in the throne room, the way he took all her hopes for their future and shattered it like his grandfather’s lightsaber.

“Never again,” he assures her without pause, without hesitation. “I promise, never again.”

She takes one last look at him, at this thing in his eyes that promises either a future or a disaster, and comes to a decision.

“Okay,” Rey says, and closes the distance between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one really got away from me, but I’ve realized that I’d rather chase after the emotions evoked by these prompt-words than write something based strictly on what they mean, and I hope that’s okay with you guys.
> 
> The breathtakingly beautiful [_landscape with a blur of conquerors_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11442951/chapters/25645101) has given me all the _cyar’ika_ feels, and I so rarely write canon-verse that I figured I might as well take this opportunity to work it in. I’ve seen it translated into a handful of endearments, but here I’ve decided to go with “beloved”, which is why it draws the reaction it did from Rey.
> 
> Anyway, this has gone on long enough as it is (a 1300-word ‘ficlet’, oops) so I’ll stop rambling now. As always, thank you for reading and please don’t hesitate to leave a comment if you enjoyed it!


	5. Hiraeth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **DAY FIVE: HIRAETH**  
>  (n.) a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past  
> For lightaroundthecorner, who requested "a Reylo modern AU ficlet with a HEA+fluff+Xmas theme".

Rey is eighteen the first time she realizes she’s homesick.

It’s her first proper Christmas ever, thanks to her roommate’s generous invitation to spend the holidays with her family. They’ve only known each other for three months, but Rose Tico does not hesitate when she realizes Rey has nowhere to go and no one to celebrate with; _we’d love to have you,_ really _, Rey,_ she insists the week before winter break, and that’s that.

On Christmas Eve they camp out on the Ticos’ porch, cradling hot cocoa while the rest of the family sleeps. They’re only two hours away from their college town of Takodana, but it feels like a whole different world here, a million stars dancing across the sky and a blanket of snow making everything look straight out of a movie.

It’s beautiful, and Rey is just about to say so when Rose lets out a heavy sigh and says, “I miss home.”

“But…” Rey turns to her, completely lost. “Isn’t this your home?”

“I mean, _now_ it is, but I miss my actual home, you know? The one with that creaky step you couldn’t avoid no matter what, the one with the bed my parents used to tuck me into, the one with the wall that we used to track how tall we were getting,” Rose smiles but it’s the saddest expression she’s ever seen on her roommate’s face, and something in Rey recognizes the hopeless longing in her voice. “It’s all gone now, of course, but… but I keep thinking it’s out there somewhere, that someday I’ll be able to go _home_.”

Home for the Ticos, Rey belatedly remembers, used to be a small mining town called Hays, one which made headlines even in Jakku when the entire place collapsed into the ground, the earth under it hollowed out by irresponsible and rampant mining. She sets down her cocoa, pulls Rose into a hug made awkward by the fact that she’s still not quite used to hugging.

“I know,” Rey says quietly in an attempt at comfort, but it’s not until the words escape her that she realizes how much she really does. She doesn’t remember anything about her home before the desert, before her parents abandoned her, but there’s this feeling that hits her sometimes, a sense of warmth and comfort and safety that couldn’t possibly have come from Jakku. Maybe it’s a fragment of a memory, maybe it’s a dream she’s mistaken for reality, but Rey thinks _that_ ’s what home is and suddenly she longs for it just as fiercely as Rose longs for her old house in Hays.

So they sit there, with Rose’s head on her shoulder, staring up at worlds they’ll never know, thinking of worlds they’ll never return to.

A year later they’re back on that porch again but this time there’s Finn and Poe to keep them company, and Rose only sighs at the sky once, and Rey thinks maybe they’re making a new home, the lot of them. Over time she learns to draw warmth from their affection and comfort from their support and safety from the knowledge that they’ll always be there for her, and tells herself that that’s close enough.

There’s a part of her, a very small part, that insists it’s not as good, it’s not _the same_ , but Rey ignores that little voice in her, that lonely girl forever longing for something out of her reach, and focuses on the life she’s built, better than any she’s ever known before – especially when Ben from down the hall finally asks her out the summer after junior year.

When they graduate a year later, he sits her down and tells her he doesn’t want to lose her, shows her his grad school offers and asks if she’d consider joining him in any of these places so that they can build a life together. She’s received job offers of her own, and two months later they pack up their things, leave their friends with a promise to visit during Christmas, and head off to Coruscant where a new life awaits.

The apartment doesn’t feel like home at first, not after three years in that tiny house she shared with Rose, Finn, and Poe, but Ben’s there and that’s all that matters. When December finally rolls around he surprises her with a tree and a box of decorations, and together they make the place a little warmer, a little more _theirs_.

Now she turns from her spot in Ben’s lap to look at their tree, with its slowly flickering lights casting shadows on the wall, and sighs as Ben runs a hand through her hair.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t make it back for Christmas,” he tells her, even though it’s no fault of his that they’re currently weathering the worst snowstorm the state has seen in a decade and all travel has been banned.

Rey opens her eyes, looks up to find his face shadowed by concern. “I know you were looking forward to it, and that you miss your friends–”

“Hey,” she cuts him off softly, pulls herself up and sits cross-legged to face him. “It’s okay, really. Rose and the others understand, and… it might be nice, just the two of us for our first Christmas here.”

Ben returns her smile, but there’s still a hint of worry in his eyes. “I’m sure it’ll be, sweetheart, but I know how much you wanted to go home for the holidays, and if we’d just left two days earlier like you wanted to–”

The thing is, Rey has spent the past four months looking forward to this trip. When they first left Takodana it was only the promise of going back for Christmas that had lightened her heart, and all these months of trying to navigate a foreign city have only been made bearable by the thought of going somewhere familiar for the holidays. Up until three days ago, Rey really _had_ been looking forward to going home.

But now she looks at Ben, the man who surprised her with decorations even though he’s not a big fan of Christmas, the man who’s taken it upon himself to feel responsible for the _weather_ , the man who refused to let life get in the way of them and sat down with her until they found a way to stay together, and realizes–

“Ben,” she smiles at him, dives into the warmth and comfort and safety of his arms, “Ben, _you’re_ my home.”

He wraps his arms around her, holds her tight in an embrace that feels just like the one from an old dream of hers. “You’re my home too, sweetheart,” he whispers in her ear, words hushed and heartfelt as he brushes his lips across her temple.

Outside the storm rages on, burying the city in snow and trapping its residents for the foreseeable future, but Rey doesn’t mind.

After all, there’s no place like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Hiraeth_ , which you might recognize as my username, happens to be my favorite word and one that I feel neatly sums up my life. I associate it with a bone-deep longing for something I'll never find, tempered by bittersweet dream-memories of that very thing.
> 
> But hey, it's the holiday season and the prompt asked for fluff so here, have a happy ending for our favorite lovebirds!
> 
> As always, thank you for reading and please don't hesitate to leave a comment below if you enjoyed it!


	6. Nemophilist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **DAY SIX: NEMOPHILIST**  
>  (n.) a haunter of the woods; one who loves the forest and its beauty and solitude  
> For kaikoura716, who requested a post-apocalyptic AU where in which "years after watching all the people she loved die, either from a plague or being killed by other survivors for supplies (or sport) Rey flees to the forests where she always felt safe from those who would hurt her, she comes across a seriously injured man whom she knows won't survive the night without her help".

There’s a kind of peace in the forest that Rey hadn’t known before, not even in the years when the world was still somewhat okay, certainly not after it completely went to shit and the Draught ruined everything.

In the forest she has a home of her own, which is more than she ever had in the desert. Sure, it’s just a rotting old cabin, but it protects her from the elements just as the woods protect her from the resource wars, and that’s all that matters. This far removed from it all, one of the less than hundred people hiding out in Maz Kanata’s forest, Rey can almost trick herself into believing that none of it is real, that she never watched the closest thing she had to family die in front of her very eyes, that she never dragged her only friend’s body across town in the dead of night to bury him before the desperate and starving could get their hands on him.

She pretends that none of it ever happened, not even Jakku. In the morning she wakes up to birdsong and a tranquility that can no longer be found anywhere else on Earth; in the evening she takes long walks and marvels at the way life continues to bloom here in the woods while everything else and everyone else dies a slow, painful death beyond the perimeters of Maz’s sanctuary.

There’s peace here in the forest, peace that Rey has never known before, peace she’d like to hold on to for the rest of her life–

–but then she nearly trips over a man on her evening walk one day and all of it is shattered, as sudden and violent as silence being pierced by the sound of a gunshot.

Worst of all, when she crouches down and turns the man on his back, a face from her past stares right back at her.

“Ben,” she gasps, her voice hoarse from disuse; tears cloud her vision in the second before she blinks them away, forces herself to get a grip. It’ll be dark soon, and he shows no signs of stirring, not even when she gathers up the courage to shake him. Rey works quickly, climbs a nearby tree to get the leaves and twigs necessary for a makeshift stretcher; it doesn’t take long after years of practice, of dragging her catches across the forest floor back to her home.

He groans just once, when she accidentally pulls him over a rock and one of the leaves rip, but mercifully the stretcher remains intact and he remains unconscious. When they get to her cabin Rey stops at the door, and decides with a heavy sigh that it’s not worth dragging all that dirt and mud in. She bends down, slings his arm around her shoulder and tries to pull him upright, but Ben – or whoever he is now, whoever he turned into after he abandoned her – is as heavy as she remembers, as warm as the reassuring weight she sometimes imagines on top of herself when the forest feels particularly cold and isolated. After a brief struggle, Rey grips the fabric of his sleeves and drags him across her floor, gets him settled on her threadbare rug before she secures the door and windows for the night.

She goes about her usual evening routine, stopping only to peek at him every once in a while as she carefully stokes a small fire in her hearth and chops up vegetables for a stew. When he remains unconscious even after she’s done with her half of dinner, Rey allows a hint of dread to curl around her heart. She’s always known that there’s a distinct possibility that Ben was in danger somewhere out there, that maybe he was _no longer_ somewhere out there. But to stumble upon him after all these years only to watch him slowly slip away would be too cruel to bear, too much after everything the world has put her through.

Rey walks over to him as quietly as she can, kneels by his side as she rests one trembling hand on his chest, over his heart. A lifetime ago, in the brief days after Jakku and before the Draught, she used to sprawl over him, press her ear to his chest and listen to her favorite sound in the world. Now she holds her breath, squeezes her eyes shut and prays to all the gods she stopped believing in a long time ago, _please please please–_

A heartbeat, faint and weak and slow but there.

And even better, the sound of his voice.

“Where– _Rey?_ ” Ben breathes, voice hushed in awe and eyes wide with disbelief until a terrible cough overwhelms him and forces him into a sitting position as he curls in on himself.

“Wa–” he chokes between coughs as she flutters helplessly around him, asking what he needs. “Wa–” It’s so obvious she almost wants to hit herself for not realizing. Rey rushes to the kitchen, comes back with a chipped bowl of water and carefully helps him drink from the half that isn’t jagged, broken ceramic.

She sets the bowl aside when he’s done, and when she turns back Ben is looking at her like she’s some kind of miracle; she recognizes the look from their earliest days together, from before the wars and the Draught and–

“Why are you here, Ben?” she asks before he can say anything, her voice shakier than she’d like it to be. “Aren’t you supposed to be in your precious First Order, helping _that man_ destroy the world?”

 _Snoke_ , her mind supplies even as she refuses to let that monster’s name pass her lips. _Snoke_ , Ben had told her with feverish eyes lit by hope, by desperation, _Snoke will help us, Rey, he owns all of the forests now, all of the resources, and he said I can bring you with me–_

But only her, and none of her friends, none of his family. In the end, Rey had fled into the last safe forest with them while Ben, Ben left them all for dead and pledged his loyalty to the man hoarding the world’s resources instead. It had been, in her short life full of too many hardships, the most difficult, most painful thing she’d ever done.

And now here he is, four years later.

“I…” Ben drops his gaze to the floor, and she watches as his shoulders slump. “Rey, I… I killed him.”

A sharp gasp escapes her, and Ben takes it as his cue to look up, to shuffle closer. “I killed Snoke. It was… I hated it, every moment, but I didn’t think there was anything else for me, I didn’t think there was anything _left_ for me, so I went along with it. But three days ago he told me Maz’s fences were still up, that everyone who escaped was still alive, and…” he stops, closes his eyes. “And… he ordered me to _fix it_. To burn the forest to the ground if I needed to.”

He’s here and Snoke’s dead and she trusts him, even after all this time she still trusts him, but Rey flinches anyway, recoils from him and pins him with a wary gaze as she asks, “Are you… is that why…”

“No!” Ben hurries to assure her, almost lunges forward but thinks better of it, gives her some space. “No, Rey, I could _never_ –”

She’s seen him do worse, seen him kill his father under Snoke’s orders to prove his loyalty and secure a place for her in the compound. But Rey, Rey is tired and hurting and the forest has a way of making things feel a lifetime away, of making you let go.

Ben moves closer, just a bit. “I had my doubts, even before. I’d seen the way the outside world was starving, the way he chose to let mountains of food rot away rather than distribute it just because he felt they were not worthy, because he wanted to punish them for not joining us. None of that matched what he told me, what he told everyone about starting a new world, bringing back peace and stability.”

A bitter laugh rips past her lips. “If you _ever_ , even for a second, were stupid enough to believe that–”

“I was,” he admits. “I was, _god_ , Rey, I was so stupid, such a fucking _idiot_ , I can’t believe I left you–”

“Don’t,” she snaps, digs her nails into her palm so hard it breaks her skin. “ _Don’t_ talk about that, I don’t want to– I _can’t_ ,” Rey chokes through the lump in her throat, wills herself not to think of the worst day of her life, of the beseeching look in his eyes right before she turned her back on him and ran with the others, of the realization that he wasn’t firing even though he had a clear shot at all of them, exposed as they were–

“I don’t want to think about it,” Rey whispers, looking down at the beads of blood seeping into her nails.

From the corner of her eye, she catches Ben crawling towards her, looks up to find him towering over her even though he’s on his knees. “It’s all I _can_ think about,” he confesses, half-reaches for her hand before he falters, draws his arm back. “Rey, for the last four years all I’ve done is think about you, worry about you, regret everything that led us to that day–”

There’s a dream Rey keeps hidden in the darkest corner of her mind, a dream she pretends not to have – and it looks an awful lot like this. Tears spring to her eyes, and she muffles a sob behind her palm. “ _Don’t_ , please, Ben, just don’t–”

He reaches out, takes her bleeding hand. “When Snoke told me you were still alive, when he asked me to kill you… I knew what I had to do. I knew what I should’ve done in the first place. After I killed him I ran away, I begged Maz to let me in, to let me see you again. I thought that was it in the forest, that I’d starve to death or something else would get to me first, but to wake up here…to wake up with you…” Ben shifts closer, until his knees bump against her own. “Rey, _please_ , please say something,” he urges, looking like the lost child she first met all those years ago, when he and Han stopped by Jakku and her life was changed forever.

Faltering under the onslaught of memories and the weight of the moment, Rey lets herself fall forward into Ben’s waiting arms. “I missed you,” she admits, hides her tears in his shirt. She loves the forest, loves the peace, but _god_ does she hate the silence that was all she knew before him, the cold nights that remind her too much of the desert, the empty space in her life where he used to be.

Ben wraps his arms around her, and for the first time in four years she’s warm again. “I missed you too, sweetheart, I’m so sorry, I’ll never leave you again–” he whispers frantic promises into her ear, and she lets her tears soak his shirt.

In the morning she’ll bring him to Leia, who lives in the main cabin with a few others. With his knowledge, maybe he’ll be of help to the uprising his mother has been putting together for the past three years, maybe he’ll be the one to finally turn the tides.

But for now, for now it’s just him and her in the forest, just the two of them in their own little world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is nearly 2000 words. I’d say it’s a double-length feature to make up for it being a day late, but really, we all know it’s just me failing miserably at keeping to the word limit - as usual.
> 
> Lots of backstory that I couldn’t get to, but I hope the little bits scattered throughout are enough to make sense of it all. Thanks to the incredibly detailed prompt, this is more plot-based than word-inspired, but hopefully that’s okay.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading! And as always, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment if you enjoyed this.


	7. Metanoia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **DAY SEVEN: METANOIA**  
>  (n.) the journey of changing one’s mind, heart, self, or way of life  
> For bex_xo, who requested a canon-verse setting.

She won’t look at him.

It’s been three weeks since Crait and this is the first time the Bond has connected them since and she won’t even _look_ at him.

“Rey,” he whispers at first, says it again when he thinks she hasn’t heard him, repeats himself until he’s a weak child again, smashing his mask and destroying consoles and screaming for attention from the woman who turned him down, who left him for dead.

He plants himself right in front of her and she just walks past him like he’s not even there, like he’s nothing. The only consolation he has is the tense set of her shoulders, the shifty look in her eyes, the way she’s sped up her pace as if to outrun him–

Her legs move, carrying her across a considerable distance, yet somehow she remains in his quarters. A good thing, given that he’s vowed never to go running down hallways and stumbling around corners for her again. On and on and on she paces, but she’s still with him when she finally reaches out, pushes an invisible door open and shuts it behind her before she slumps against it.

Then and only then – in the privacy of her own quarters, he realizes – does she look at him.

“Hello, Kylo,” she says quietly, evenly, and her voice breaks him just as much as her words do.

“ _Ben_ ,” he reminds her, all desperate and weak and pathetic like he’s always been, like he wouldn’t be if she’d just stayed, stayed and shared her strength and quelled his fears. “ _You_ call me Ben.”

Rey nods – a slow dip of her head that signals nothing other than acknowledgement. He dreams of her sometimes, eyes bright and full of tears, and tells himself he never wants to see her crying again but surely even that would be better than this Rey, than this _nothing_. “I used to,” she says in that calm, unaffected tone of hers, as if she’s actually mastered this Jedi thing in just three weeks. “I used to call you Ben, and I’d like to call you Ben again, someday.”

“Then _do it_ ,” he demands, moves into her space almost as if daring her. “Do it, call me Ben again, look me in the eye when you–” _speak the name of the man who offered you everything, the man you were supposed to save_. But before he can say anything of the like, before he can reopen wounds that haven’t even had the time to close yet, Rey stops him with a shake of her head, with a smile sadder than anything he’s ever seen on her.

Sad yet serene somehow, _resigned,_ and for a moment he genuinely fears that she’s completely lost herself to the Jedi way already.

“I get it now,” Rey whispers, falls against the door he can’t see and closes her eyes in the presence of the most dangerous man in the galaxy. “I didn’t before, but I understand now,” she tells him, and when she opens her eyes he thinks he can see a thousand stars reflected in them.

“What?” he asks softly, gently, always soft and gentle with her and look where that got him, look where he is now, a hollow victory and a throne of lies and a destiny that still doesn’t feel right–

Rey steadies herself with a deep breath, flashes him that kriffing Jedi smile again. “I can’t bring back Ben Solo,” she announces, and this is it, this is what it’s like to watch the last star in the sky go out, to watch the last flicker of hope extinguish itself.

“So you’re–‘” _just going to give up,_ he tries and fails to say, the words getting stuck somewhere in his throat, in the lump of emotions he’s choking on. _On this, on me, on us._

She hears him anyway, steps forward and nearly, _nearly_ puts her hand on his arm. He focuses on that, on the hair’s breadth between them, instead of her serene eyes. “I can’t bring back Ben Solo,” Rey says again, and he wants to grab her by her shoulders, shake some sense into her, ask her how she can be so _wrong_ , doesn’t she realize– “Only you can do that.”

_Oh._

He looks at her then, and she finally offers him a piece of her, of _Rey_ rather than this bantha shit Jedi act: she smiles at him, just like she did in the turbolift before Snoke, before everything went wrong.

“And when you do,” Rey whispers, her voice faint as the sounds of his environment come rushing back into his ears, as the Bond frays, “I’ll be here waiting for him.”

In the second before she vanishes entirely, her hand finally makes contact with his arm and he sees, for the very first time, what she saw the day they touched hands – the vision that sent her halfway across the galaxy, into enemy territory, for _him_.

The next day, he sees their future playing out on his datapad rather than the briefing holo Hux is walking the room through.

A week later, torn between his generals’ recommendations and his own principles, he thinks _only you can do that._

Three months later, as his Order reveals itself to have been Hux’s all along, as all of his decisions go unheeded, he makes a choice.

Drifting in space, with a datapad full of secrets and a navicomputer waiting for coordinates, Ben closes his eyes, reaches across the stars–

–and finds Rey waiting as promised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hallelujah, I finally managed to keep something under a thousand words again! 
> 
> On a less celebratory note, I realize now that this is more about the journey building up to metanoia rather than the actual journey of metanoia. Oops.
> 
> I hope you guys enjoyed it anyway. As always, thanks for reading and please don’t hesitate to leave a comment. And thank you, thank you, thank you for all of the support so far; it's definitely given me the push I need to keep writing every day despite RL and creative burnout.


	8. Weltanschauung

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **DAY EIGHT: WELTANSCHAUUNG**  
>  (n.) world view, personal philosophy; world sorrow, sadness at the world's woes  
> For dawninthemtn, who requested a modern AU where "cynical executive Ben Solo believes that no one has pure intentions and everyone is in it for the money. His boss forces him to work with a local non-profit for their Christmas service initiative, headed by the idealistic Rey".

“How’s the soup going?” Rey asks, popping her head into the kitchen.

Ben looks up to see her sparkling eyes, her bright smile, and nearly chops his finger off. It’s his third year volunteering at her holiday soup kitchen, and she still takes his breath away. “Um–” he stutters, drops his knife as she walks in and heads straight for him.

From his spot at the stove, Finn barely takes his eyes off his stir-fry as he tells Rey, “It’ll get going as soon as Ben there has everything chopped and sliced. How’s that going, man?”

“Almost done,” he assures Finn as Rey inspects his work. “Just a few more carrots to go.”

Rey hums her approval, straightens out a few things on the cluttered counter before she steps away. “I’ll leave you guys to it, then,” she says. “Ben, when you’re finished here could you come help me set up? Doors open in an hour and we’re only half done.”

“Yeah, sure, of course,” Ben agrees a little too quickly, eager to get out of the kitchen. He waits until Rey’s given him one last smile and walked away before he picks up his knife again, loses a good twenty seconds staring after her.

A snort breaks him from his reverie. “Dude,” Finn shakes his head with that shit-eating grin of his. “You are _so_ whipped.”

“Fuck off,” Ben mutters as he gets back to his carrots. “I’m allowed to be.”

“Just sayin’,” Finn sing-songs before he turns his attention back to the stove and the kitchen lapses into its usual soundtrack of sizzling and popping and chopping.

Three Decembers here and he’s still not fully at ease in the kitchen or around Rey’s friends or with the people they’re here to help. Cooking has never been his forte and he still remembers her friends’ initial disapproval of him so that’s all right, but every time Ben finds himself glaring at a diner for staring at Rey or scowling at someone for being less than pleased with her generosity, twin waves of guilt and discomfort wash over him.

What kind of asshole behaves that way towards the homeless and underprivileged on Christmas Eve?

 _This asshole_ , Ben thinks as he finishes up with the carrots and brings the ingredients over to Finn. As hard as he tries, he still can’t fully come around to Rey’s way of seeing things, her way of seeing _people_. She knows better than anyone how self-serving humans are, how shitty the world can be, yet year after year she welcomes disgruntled diners with a warm smile and a hot meal, and worries for them all the same whether or not they thank her at the end of the night.

Ben, meanwhile, sees assholes who won’t show even the slightest hint of gratitude, assholes who take what they want and then disappear into the night without even a smile at Rey and her team, and it weighs on him. He should be used to this kind of shitty behavior – is surrounded by it all day every day in the corporate world – yet the realization that _everyone_ can be awful, whether they’re in the 1% or sleeping on the streets, just makes him… tired. Tired for himself, tired for the world, tired for _Rey_ , who keeps her smile plastered on every evening and makes excuses for everyone around her, _we don’t know their story, Ben, maybe they’re just having a bad day,_ hell _, they wouldn’t be here if they weren’t going through a rough patch–_

And whenever he pushes the subject she just relives her own rough patch, reminds him that she was one of those sullen, bitter people once, uncomfortable with the generosity of strangers, angry at the world and ashamed at herself for needing it.

 _How far you’ve come_ , Ben thinks with a swell of pride as he leaves the kitchen to find Rey directing Snap and Poe on the placement of tables and chairs. The kitchen operates for the whole month of December, thanks to generous funding from the Organa Foundation and an even more generous donation from their corporate partner, the First Order, but tonight is Christmas Eve, their biggest feast of the month; Rey’s ordered extra tables for it, spent all day reorganizing the room to ensure maximum capacity.

He walks up to her just as the guys finally set the table down to her liking, and Rey immediately turns to him with a wide grin when she registers his presence. “Ben! How’s the soup?”

“In Finn’s capable hands now,” he reports. “What do you need me to do?”

“We still have ten tables waiting outside; come help me with them?” Rey offers him her hand, and he drops a kiss on her forehead as he laces their fingers together. The metal of her wedding band is cold to the touch – the dining area is slightly cooler than the kitchen, and his hands are warm from an hour of food prep – but it still makes his heart skip a beat. The novelty of it all, of having her as his _wife_ , has yet to wear off after four months; privately, he thinks it never will.

They make quick work of the remaining tables, and before he knows it their doors are wide open and Rey is by the entrance with Rose, greeting diners and welcoming them to sit anywhere they’d like, to stay as long as they want.

Ben is on serving duty with Poe and Kaydel, and his heart thaws a bit when familiar faces from previous years greet him with smiles and variations of _Merry Christmas!_ Maybe, _just maybe_ , Rey had a point when she told him to stop generalizing and seeing only the worst in people.

He tries his best to return their smiles and greetings in kind, and when Rey shows up by his side an hour later, she beams at him with unrestrained joy. “You haven’t scowled even once!” she informs him, eyes shining with pride.

“I guess it’s not _that_ bad,” Ben mumbles defensively, ducks his head even though there’s no hiding his pink ears. “You were right,” he adds after Rey shoos Poe off for his break and takes his place next to Ben. “They’re not all bad.”

Rey turns to him with a soft smile, squeezes his arm before she turns to serve the next diner. “No one’s all bad, Ben. All of us just need a reminder of that sometimes, a reminder of our humanity.”

When Snoke first ordered him to get more involved with the company’s CSR initiatives three years ago, Rey had been the one to see through his cold façade, to decide that _he_ wasn’t all bad after all. She’s his reminder, his better half in every sense of the word, and with every Christmas she helps him regain his humanity one bit at a time.

A while later there’s finally a lull, and he turns to find Rey watching the diners, sees the way the exhaustion on her face melts into a soft contentment. The soup kitchen is warm and loud, a celebration like any other, and it’s all thanks to this incredible woman next to him, this single individual who breezed into his life three years ago and completely shattered his narrow worldview to present him with something infinitely more hopeful, more beautiful.

Ben takes his wife’s hand and draws her in for a kiss.

“What was that for?” Rey murmurs against his lips, and the familiar imprint of her smile coaxes a matching one from him.

“Just felt like it,” he shrugs, “because I love you, and you’re amazing.”

Rey winds her arms around his neck, presses their foreheads together. “I love you too,” she says quietly, and it still feels like a miracle every time those words fall from her lips, every time he’s reminded that someone like her loves someone like him, that something so good and pure can exist in this world. “Merry Christmas, Ben.”

But thanks to Rey, he knows now that the world really _can_ be a good and beautiful place – especially with her in it.

“Merry Christmas, sweetheart.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we’re back to exceeding the word limit; this one’s a little over 1300 words. It’s also very, very loosely inspired by the prompt word rather than directly based on it, which seems to be on-brand for me.
> 
> But hey, it’s the holiday season! I think it’s okay to write fluffy Reylo rather than sad and world-weary Ben just this once, right?
> 
> As always, thank you for reading and please don’t hesitate to leave a comment if you enjoyed this!


	9. Sillage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **DAY NINE: SILLAGE**  
>  (n.) the scent that lingers in air, the trail left in water, the impression made in space after something or someone has been and gone; the trace of someone’s perfume  
> For VeriLee, who asked for something "angsty with a happy ending" but didn't specify a setting, so somehow we've ended up with a sequel to Day 3's medieval AU. Oops.

A fortnight has passed since Rey rode out to meet a pocket of resistance in Coruscant, where Hux’s dwindling forces have decided to stage a final stand against the fall of Mustafar.

In the days since, Ben has spent what feels like all his time pacing the stone floors of his balcony, eyes fixed on the distance beyond his mother’s land, seeking out the sight of a rider, a messenger, _anything_. At night he lies awake and berates himself for not going with her, for letting her and his mother convince him that his place is here in Alderaan, soothing the concerns of their subjects both old and new, ensuring a smooth transition as Snoke’s stolen kingdom reintegrates into its rightful home.

His sheets stopped smelling of her by the fourth night, but if he looks closely enough the mattress still bears the indent of her slight weight from all the nights that she snuck into his chambers. _I infiltrated a tower fortress for you before we’d even met, beloved,_ she had told him once, cheeks rosy with laughter at the surprise on his face the first time she managed to find a way past the guards. _Do you really think anything can keep me from you now?_

Those words again, the morning she was to ride for Coruscant, the morning he tried to keep her in bed, here and safe and alive. _Ben,_ nothing _can keep me from you for long. Not custom, not war, not even death. I swear it._

 _Then where,_ Ben wonders bitterly, eyes on the horizon, _are you now?_

They’ve had word from Coruscant, of course; his mother’s network of informants ensures that they are kept apprised of the battle scores at each turn, with only two days’ delay. Yet from Rey he has received _nothing_ since the day she rode into the sunrise, glorious and otherworldly at the head of her troops, every inch the reincarnated warrior queen the kingdom thinks her to be.

She lives – this much he knows, or he would have set out for Coruscant himself days ago, his mother’s wishes be damned. But it is not like her, this prolonged silence; in their three years of war they have grown accustomed to separation, but the pain has always been soothed by her letters, or small messages passed along with his mother’s updates when she could not find the time to pen those. Her silence is unnerving, worrying, _terrifying_ if he’s being honest with himself, which he only ever is in the dead of night when the bed is too cold and the silence too much to bear and the fear all-consuming.

Benjamin, Crown Prince of Alderaan, has not slept since his betrothed rode out, and all the castle’s staff, all his mother’s courtiers, know it, whisper of it behind his back, sigh over the immensity of his love for their brave, loyal, _darling_ Rey.

If she does not come back, if he descends into madness and takes the whole kingdom down with him – will they still sigh then? Will they write songs of his great love with Rey, of the knight who rescued their wayward prince and restored him to his position, stealing his heart while she was at it?

Far more likely that they will whisper darkly of the madness in his family, of grandfathers and grandsons driven mad by love and loss, of Alderaan reduced to ashes like Naboo before it.

“Ben,” a soft voice calls out, saving him from the darkness of his mind, but it is only his mother, only his mother here to offer him the comfort of an embrace even though surely the Queen has more pressing matters to attend to than her lovesick son.

“Mother,” he sighs as he steps into her arms, never mind that he outgrew her long before they became strangers and in the years since has only grown taller. The day Rey brought him home his mother had found a way to fold him into her embrace anyway, and since then they have become a rare source of comfort, his _only_ source of comfort in the absence of his beloved knight.

“What news from Coruscant?” Ben asks as they break apart and his mother motions for him to join her as she rests her weight against the balcony’s wrought iron railing.

She smiles then, and though it is not as much of a relief as he had hoped, it is at least _something_. “The last of it was over with a little over three days ago, when Hux and those few still loyal to him were taken into custody.”

Good news, but not of the variant he seeks, and his mother is well aware of it. “Rey,” she finally says with a knowing look, “indicated that she hopes to be home by tonight at the latest, even if she must ride ahead of the troops.”

The weight of the past two weeks takes leave of him, and Ben feels as though he can finally breathe again. “Mother,” he intones, trying to keep a smile at bay. “Mother, when she returns, I intend to–”

“I know,” the Queen halts him with a smile, slips her mother’s ring off her finger without any fanfare and presses it into his palm. “I know.”

“Thank you,” Ben whispers fervently, drawing her into an embrace. His mother lingers only a while longer, just to remind him that it would do him well to eat something today, before she leaves to share the news with her council.

Queen Leia the Fierce has always given sound advice, but just this once Ben decides to ignore her; the family’s private dining room is set for a feast when he walks by, but his feet lead him to the stables instead. With the ring secured in a hidden pocket, he rides out to the Northern gates where last he’d seen Rey.

It is barely evening, yet like something out of a fairy tale he arrives at the gates in time to see three figures approaching in the distance. They must see him too, for while two of the figures fall back, one urges her horse into a gallop and quickly obliterates the space between them until she is close enough to see, close enough to hear.

“I swore, didn’t I?” Rey calls out as her horse slows into a trot and she motions for a guard to come forth. “Not custom, not war, not death,” his knight reminds him as she jumps down and hands the reins over.

“So you did,” Ben says, though he doubts that she can hear him, weak and breathless as his voice is. Her face lights up all the same, and within seconds she breaks into a run, closes the distance between them and throws herself into his arms.

“I missed you,” he says quietly, closer to tears than he would like to admit. The familiarity of her scent, the comfort of her warmth – everything about her leaves him weak at the knees.

Rey nuzzles his neck, presses a kiss to his collarbone. “I missed you too, beloved,” she sighs before they break apart. When he sets her down he takes her firmly by the shoulders, and Rey indulges his careful inspection of her with a roll of her eyes.

“Not a scratch,” she assures him. “Now can we go home? I’ve been riding for three days, and I find I quite miss the comfort of our bed.”

To have her back in his – _their_ – quarters sounds like something out of a dream, but first–

“One last thing,” Ben tells her, and promptly drops to one knee.

“Wha–” Rey laughs, tries to pull him up. “Ben, what in the world? Have I been gone so long that you’ve forgotten? We’re _already_ betrothed–”

“As we have been since long before we met,” he acknowledges. “As we have been for the past five years, but– Rey, I promise you all the time in the world, I promise I will be yours forever, but I can no longer bear another five years, or even one. I cannot bear even another month.” As the words spill from his lips and her eyes fill with tears, he snakes one hand into his vest and retrieves the ring from his pocket.

“ _Ben_ –” she breathes when he holds it up to her, an offer and a plea all in one.

“The war is finally over, my love. Say you’ll marry me,” he all but begs, prince of three royal bloodlines brought to his knees by an orphan, a nobody, _his_ knight. “Say you’ll be my wife, my Queen, the mother of my–”

Rey falls to her knees, silences him with a kiss that would surely scandalize his mother’s court.

“ _Of course_ I will,” she laughs against his lips, cheeks damp with tears.

And just like that, the void he’s carried within himself for the past two weeks is filled with love once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, this one really went off the rails. First of all, I never even considered writing a sequel to the medieval AU! And then when I saw the prompt an idea for Leia’s funeral after the war popped into my head, so I knew I wasn’t done with this ‘verse but I didn’t want to write such a downer for a holiday collection. And then this happened instead.
> 
> Seriously, Lee, send me another prompt so I can make up for this because I have no idea how this happened but I’m so sorry!
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you guys enjoyed this despite everything. As always, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment if you liked it!


	10. Smultronställe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **DAY TEN: SMULTRONSTÄLLE**  
>  (n.) lit. “place of wild strawberries”; a special place discovered, treasured, returned to for solace and relaxation; a personal idyll free from stress or sadness  
> For sreyracha, who asked for something “canon-compliant or canon divergent with lots of fluff and some smut”. Here’s a canon divergent Jedi!Rey/Senator!Ben AU, because I’ve been waiting for an excuse to write one of those.

It’s said that the moon Onoam was once a retreat for the wealthiest citizens of Naboo, a paradise of sprawling estates and rolling hills not unlike its planet’s Lake Country.

By the time Rey and Ben first stumbled upon it, however, those estates had long since fallen into disrepair, and the only settlement around was a mining colony a day away by speeder. Stranded on the moon for at least three standard days while Finn and Poe took it upon themselves to lead the HoloNet’s greediest gossip hounds on a grand journey of misdirection, they’d been unwilling to spend their honeymoon cooped up in the Falcon and had decided to explore their surroundings instead, eventually coming upon a caretaker’s cabin far removed from all of the palatial structures.

Ben’s first act upon returning to civilization had been to track down the rightful owners of the cabin and purchase it, and in the years since they’ve turned it into their home away from home much like the Naboo elite who once inhabited the moon.

Rey, child of the desert and later of Luke’s simple, austere Jedi temple, thinks she far prefers their little cabin over any of the mansions built by said elites. And now that the place has finally been completely fixed up, three years after they first found it and entirely by their own hands, it’s better than ever before.

“So,” Ben murmurs into her ear, arms encircling her from behind as they both stand back to admire their little home away from home, hidden from prying eyes and cam droids by the forest around them. “Are you finally happy with this, or am I going to wake up alone to find you tinkering with the ‘fresher again?”

“I just wanted to check the pipes!” Rey protests defensively, but the slight laugh in her voice gives away her joy and satisfaction at a job well done. “And yes, I’m happy,” she tells her husband, turning around in his arms to loop her hands around his neck. “You know I’m always happy with you, right? Doesn’t matter if we’re here or in Coruscant or anywhere else in the galaxy.”

“Me too, sweetheart,” Ben sighs, brushing a kiss to her temple. “But we should come here more often. I know it annoys you, all the attention back home.”

Rey shrugs. “I guess that’s what I get for marrying the most famous Senator in the galaxy. Now, come on,” she slips from his embrace, takes his hand with a smile. “I’m ready for dinner.”

Ben lets her guide them back into the cabin. “I wouldn’t say the _most_ famous,” he mutters, bashful as always of his popularity; as the descendant of Padmé and Leia, he was always going to attract attention the second he decided to leave the temple and wade into galactic politics instead. But there’s no denying that he’s been even more in demand ever since their wedding, the previously cold and intimidating Senator Organa-Solo made approachable and relatable by a forbidden love that left the galaxy swooning; never mind the fact that Luke hadn't bothered to impose the old rules on his Jedi and so theirs had never been a forbidden relationship to begin with.

But the HoloNet doesn't concern itself with such small details; instead it clamors for more pictures of Ben smiling at his wife, more voyeuristic footage of them going about their lives. Nearly every morning Rey wakes up and senses at least three cam droids hovering outside the window of their apartment on the forty-eighth floor, as if she’d be stupid enough to open the curtains.

On Onoam, though, there are no droids, no overly-cheery HoloNet anchors approaching them in the streets for a scoop, an update, whatever it is they call it when they steal bits and pieces of a person’s private life and package it into something profitable. On this quiet, forgotten moon, there’s just Rey and Ben and the only true peace she’s known since she left the temple to begin her assignment as Ben’s protection detail all those years ago.

After dinner, they stand side by side at the sink, Ben handing over rinsed dishes for her to dry and put away, and it’s so similar yet so different to evenings spent at home in Coruscant, where Ben is forever on call and she’s always on guard. On a typical day at home, the peaceful silence of their evening would be shattered any minute now by the other Senators summoning Ben for urgent last-minute negotiations or revisions; on Onoam, there is no way for any of his colleagues to contact him even if the whole Republic were to fall apart while they’re gone.

Instead, Ben turns off the water and reaches for her dishcloth, pats both their hands dry before he hoists her up onto the kitchen island. Rey hooks one leg around his middle, draws him close for a languid kiss that reminds her of sneaking out to the forest after morning meditation to escape curious eyes. Sometimes it feels like they’ve been watched every single step of their relationship, from the earliest days in Luke’s temple until their anniversary dinner on Naboo four nights ago; if not for the occasional reprieve of Onoam, she might’ve started using those meddlesome cam droids for target practice a long time ago.

“Bed?” Ben asks between kisses, pulling back just enough to look at her.

They’re always so careful in Coruscant, always keeping things in the bedroom just in case. Rey shakes her head, pulls him back down. “Here,” she mumbles against Ben’s lips, smiling into his kiss, and he happily indulges her. Far from the responsibilities and urgency of their day-to-day lives, Ben takes his time unwinding her arm wraps and she allows herself to get distracted between undoing the buttons of his tunic, tilting her head back to let him leave a trail of marks down the delicate skin of her neck.

It’s fully nighttime by the time their clothes are pooled on the floor, the sun having disappeared into the horizon while they were caught up in each other. Rey leans forward to rest her chin on Ben’s shoulder as he sinks into her, spares one glance at Onoam’s night sky before she closes her eyes and surrenders to the intimacy of being joined with her husband, still so overwhelmingly perfect and _right_ after all these years.

 _This_ , Rey thinks as she brushes her lips along the curve of Ben’s shoulder, _this is home._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This... did not go the way I thought it would. I had at least three plans for how this ficlet would go, but then I started writing and this happened instead. @sreyracha, I hope you like it anyway!
> 
> There’s a lot of contradictory information on Naboo’s moons, even on Wookieepedia, [but here's the tiny entry on Onoam.](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Onoam)
> 
> As always, thanks for reading and please don’t hesitate to leave a comment if you enjoyed this!


	11. Vorfreude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **DAY ELEVEN: VORFREUDE**  
>  (n.) the joyful, intense anticipation that comes from imagining future pleasures  
> For anon, who requested a modern AU holiday work party.

“Rey, are you sure you’re okay out here?”

It’s the third time in the last thirty minutes that someone has dropped by the balcony to check on her, but Rey can’t bring herself to be irritated. After all, Rose and the others just mean well, and it _is_ uncharacteristic of her to seclude herself while the holiday party is in full swing.

But it’s just not the same without Ben.

“I’m fine, Rose,” she assures her friend with a smile, turning around to lean against the balcony railing. “I’ll be back inside in a bit, okay? Go enjoy the party.”

Rose doesn’t look convinced, but she steps back inside anyway. “Just don’t let yourself freeze, all right? Ben’s almost here, and god knows we’ll never hear the end of it if we let you get sick on our watch,” she says with a roll of her eyes, but the twinkle in her eyes belies the teasing nature of her words.

“He’s on his way?” Rey asks, fumbling to retrieve her phone from the deep pocket of her coat. Sure enough, she finds an unread message from Ben, sent just seven minutes ago.

“Yeah, Leia just heard from him. So get back in here soon, okay? Or I guess I _could_ send him your way to warm you up,” Rose suggests with a knowing look that quickly turns into a laugh when Rey ducks her head. “All right, all right, I’ll leave you to it. Fifteen minutes,” she warns Rey as she begins to pull the balcony door shut, “or I’m sending Solo after you.”

Little does she know that Rey’s counting on it.

 ** _Ben:_**  
_On my way now. Traffic looks okay._  
_Where are you?_

 _Rey:  
_ _Balcony  
See you soon_

With at least a few more minutes to kill, Rey can’t help but scroll through their chat until she reaches their conversation from last week, the one she’s read at least twenty times since.

 ** _Ben:_**  
_So yeah, looks like everything’s working out.  
Hopefully we’ll finish negotiating before Christmas._

 ** _Rey:_**  
_But you’re coming back either way, right?  
No point staying there while everyone’s on break_

 _ **Ben:**  
__Definitely coming back._  
_And_  
_Rey_  
_Can we talk when I get home?_

 **_Rey:  
_ ** _Is everything okay?_

 _ **Ben:**  
Everything’s fine, don’t worry._  
_It’s just_  
_I miss you._

 **_Rey:  
_ ** _I miss you too_

 _ **Ben:**  
__More than I should._  
_I miss you more than I should miss a work friend._  
_And I think about you._  
_More than I should think about a work friend._  
_And I care about you._

_**Rey:  
** More than you should care about a work friend?_

**_Ben:  
_ ** _Yes._

 **_Rey:  
_ ** _Then maybe we’re more than just work friends_

 ** _Ben:_**  
_That’s what I want to talk about.  
In person, if you don’t mind._

 ** _Rey:_**  
_Of course I don’t  
Come home soon, Ben_

 **_Ben:  
_ ** _As soon as I can, I promise._

Three years of lingering looks and accidental touches and _of course_ Ben would choose to bring this up when he’s halfway across the country, leaving her with nothing but her imagination to keep her company for a week.

But oh, what a week it’s been. She’s thought about it before, the two of them and what they could be together, but knowing that he feels the same way, that it’s actually a possibility now… Rey has spent every morning since that conversation wondering what it’ll feel like to wake up next to him, gone to bed every night looking forward to falling asleep in his arms. She thinks of Ben offering to drive her home whenever she works late and tries to imagine what it’ll be like driving to work together, and she substitutes memories of him bringing her a muffin back from lunch with plans for them to go on lunch dates together. Her daydreams of their life together look like they’re filtered with sunlight, each one radiant and golden and vibrant with future happiness, and even the chilling temperatures of mid-winter can’t chase away the warmth that’s settled deep in her bones at the thought of what lies ahead.

It’s quiet tonight, the city muffled by a blanket of snow, and it feels to Rey like a pause between sentences, like the space between two chapters, like a moment of silence before a new beginning heralded by the sound of the sliding door behind her.

His coat is misbuttoned.

Ben is back and he’s here for her and he’s looking at her like she’s the sun but all Rey can think of is his misbuttoned coat, and between one breath and the next she’s crossed the distance between them.

“Hey,” Ben murmurs as she brings her hands up to his chest to fix his buttons, and his voice, equal measures confused and amused, has her wrapping her arms around him and pressing her face into the hollow of his neck as he draws her closer.

“Hi,” Rey says in return, pressing a kiss to the dip in his collarbone. It feels like the most intimate thing they’ve ever shared, the most natural thing she’s ever done.

“God, I missed you,” he whispers, lips brushing against her crown, and Rey takes a second to commit the moment to memory before she steps back to look at him. He’s not smiling, not the way she is, but the vulnerability on his face and the honesty in his eyes more than make up for it. “I missed you so much, and I thought about you all the time, and I just…” Ben closes his eyes, takes a shaky breath before he looks at her like she’s holding his heart in her hands. “Rey, I think I’ve been in love with you since the day we met.”

Her heart stutters and her chest feels tight and her vision is blurry and it’s _perfect_ , Ben’s arms still around her, the snow gently falling around them, everyone else on the other side of the glass so that it feels like it's only the two of them in the whole wide world–

Rey tries so, so hard not to, but she ruins the perfect moment with a confused frown anyway. “But then why didn’t you– At last year’s party, I asked you to…” She can’t actually repeat her request, sober as she is now and drunk as she was then, but Rey knows that she was very, _very_ clear about her feelings for him after that night’s impromptu after-party at Poe’s, so why–

“I wanted to,” he tells her, one hand moving up from her waist to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. “ _God_ , Rey, you have no idea how much I wanted to. But you were drunk, and it… it wouldn’t have been right. Leaving you at your place that night was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I couldn’t risk you regretting it in the morning. And I told myself if you really _did_ feel the same way about me, then you’d ask me again some other time, when you were sober.”

She never did, but only because– “I thought you weren’t interested,” Rey admits, leaning into the warmth of his palm curved along her jaw. “Between that and the mistletoe thing from my first year, I was ready to cut my losses and give up.”

“The mistle…” Ben’s brow furrows in question for a second before he removes his hand from her face to run it down his own. “That was _painful_. I feel like punching myself every time I think about it.”

Rey grimaces at the memory. “ _Painful_ doesn’t even begin to cover it, Ben. You rejected me in front of the whole office and kissed me on my _forehead_ like a child,” she reminds him, though there’s considerably less hurt in her voice now than there would’ve been had they talked about this before last week’s conversation.

“I’m sorry,” he says, dropping his hand back to her waist. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize… I, I wasn’t thinking at all, I guess. I just didn’t want our first kiss to be because of a _plant_.”

At the word _kiss_ her eyes can’t help but dart down to his lips, and distantly Rey hears herself asking, “Then what _do_ you want it to be?”

Ben curls a finger under her chin, brings her eyes back to his. “I want it to be a choice,” he whispers. “I want to choose you, and I want you to choose me. And I want it to be ours, just the two of us, without the whole office watching.”

Rey moves her hands up to wrap around his neck, rises up on her tiptoes. “It’s just us now,” she points out hopefully, lips barely an inch away from his.

The rest they leave unspoken, their choices made long ago. He leans in until their foreheads touch, until they share the same breath, and then finally, _finally,_ Ben kisses her.

The first touch of his lips feels like something out of a dream, like something she’s been anticipating for so long that she can’t quite believe it’s finally happening. It doesn’t even feel real, not until Ben coaxes her to part her lips and deepens the kiss, slides his hands down to the back of her thighs and guides her to wrap her legs around him as he leans her against the brick wall of the balcony.

“I,” Ben whispers breathlessly when they finally part, looking at her with stars in his eyes, “have been waiting a _lifetime_ for you.”

Rey smiles at him, feels a familiar warmth travel through her veins when he smiles back. “No more waiting,” she promises, thinking of tomorrow morning and the day after and the day after, a lifetime they can finally begin now that they’ve taken the first step, now that she’s ready to tell him– “Ben, I–“

A barrage of knocks rattles the sliding door next to them, and they turn to find half the office grinning at them through the glass.

“It’s midnight, lovebirds!” Rose calls through the glass, her muffled voice contagious with glee. “Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas!” Ben says in return before he waves everyone off and guides Rey out of view. “Merry Christmas, Rey,” he murmurs, dipping down for a quick kiss. “You were saying?”

She could brush it off, could drag him back into the party and tell him some other time, but– _No more waiting,_ Rey reminds herself, and calls forth words she’s been sitting on for far too long.

“Ben,” she whispers, and the way he looks at her makes it so easy to say– “Ben, I love you.”

When he smiles, Rey sees their whole future ahead of them, all radiant and golden and vibrant with promise, with love.

“I love you too, sweetheart,” he murmurs into their kiss, and the rest of the world – even the cheering horde on the other side of the glass – melts away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can’t believe I rewrote this three times and it still ended up being nearly two thousand words anyway. Also: somewhere along the line, the work party bit became less and less prominent until it ended up being just a background thing. I’m so sorry, anon! If I ever do revisit this idea using the first two versions I wrote, I promise there’ll be considerably more office party stuff.
> 
> Anyway: one down, five more to catch up to. And after that, only nine more days to go!
> 
> As always, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed this. Please don’t hesitate to leave a comment; even the tiniest bit of encouragement helps!


	12. Tsundoko

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **DAY TWELVE: TSUNDOKO**  
>  (n.) buying books and not reading them; letting books pile up unread on shelves or floors or nightstands  
> For dawninthemtn, who asked for a modern AU in which “Ben Solo keeps trying to cancel his Book-A-Month subscription service, but just can't seem to say no to the friendly customer service agent”.

** JUNE **

**To:** [custservice@resistancebooks.com](mailto:custservice@resistancebooks.com)  
**From:** [ben_solo@gmail.com](mailto:ben_solo@gmail.com)  
**Subject: Cancellation/refund**

My friend used my credit card to sign me up for a one-year YA subscription as a prank. I didn’t realize until the first box arrived today. I’d like to cancel the subscription and just pay for the box I’ve already received, if that’s okay.

**To:** [ben_solo@gmail.com](mailto:ben_solo@gmail.com)  
**From:** [r_niima.custservice@resistancebooks.com](mailto:r_niima.custservice@resistancebooks.com)  
**Subject: Re: Cancellation/refund**

Hi, Ben! I’m so sorry to hear about your experience with our service.

Our refund policy allows you to change your mind anytime and get a full refund for boxes not yet received. But might I suggest changing boxes instead? At $29.99 per month for a box of three books with a combined retail value of up to $59.99, we’re the most affordable book service in the country! If YA isn’t your thing, we offer eleven other standard boxes, along with an option for customization.

If you’d like to give us a second chance, please take this quick quiz to determine the best box for you. The results will automatically be emailed to me upon completion, and I’d be happy to guide you through the selection process.

Best regards,  
Rey Niima,  
Customer service representative,  
Resistance Books.

* * *

** JULY **

**To:**[ben_solo@gmail.com](mailto:ben_solo@gmail.com)  
**From:** [r_niima.custservice@resistancebooks.com](mailto:r_niima.custservice@resistancebooks.com)  
**Subject: First box!**

Hi, Ben!

Your first sci-fi/fantasy box just shipped out today, and should reach you within three working days. I hope you enjoy the selection, and thank you again for choosing to stick with us!

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me!

Best regards,  
Rey Niima,  
Customer service representative,  
Resistance Books.

**To:**[r_niima.custservice@resistancebooks.com](mailto:r_niima.custservice@resistancebooks.com)  
**From:**[ben_solo@gmail.com](mailto:ben_solo@gmail.com)  
 **Subject: Re: First box!**

Hi, Rey.

Three working days, just like you said. Everything looks okay, thanks for your help.

Regards,  
Ben.

**To:**[ben_solo@gmail.com](mailto:ben_solo@gmail.com)  
**From:** [r_niima.custservice@resistancebooks.com](mailto:r_niima.custservice@resistancebooks.com)  
**Subject: Re: Re: First box!**

Hi, Ben!

I’m glad to hear the box arrived on time! If you don’t mind, please keep me informed on how you like the selection. I’ve got a few other suggestions for you based on your quiz results, and I’d be happy to switch your subscription if you’re not absolutely pleased with the sci-fi/fantasy box.

Best regards,  
Rey Niima,  
Customer service representative,  
Resistance Books.

**To:**[r_niima.custservice@resistancebooks.com](mailto:r_niima.custservice@resistancebooks.com)  
**From:** [ben_solo@gmail.com](mailto:ben_solo@gmail.com)  
**Subject: Re: Re: Re: First box!**

Hey, Rey.

I think that might be for the best. Sci-fi just isn’t what it used to be. Or maybe I’ve changed; it’s been a while since I last read anything in that genre.

Of course, if that’s too much trouble you can always just go ahead and process my refund. I’d hate to take up more of your time.

Regards,  
Ben.

**To:**[ben_solo@gmail.com](mailto:ben_solo@gmail.com)  
**From:** [r_niima.custservice@resistancebooks.com](mailto:r_niima.custservice@resistancebooks.com)  
**Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: First box!**

Hi, Ben!

It’s no trouble at all! I first joined Resistance back when it was an actual store, and I’ve always loved matching readers up with the right book. As long as you’re okay with it, I’d like to keep going until we find you the right match.

My next suggestion for you based on your quiz results is one of our non-fiction boxes, the history/anthropology combo. Please let me know by the 23rd of this month if you’re interested in that so that I can arrange for the switch and shipping.

Best regards,  
Rey Niima,  
Customer service representative,  
Resistance Books.

* * *

** AUGUST **

**To:**[r_niima.custservice@resistancebooks.com](mailto:r_niima.custservice@resistancebooks.com)  
**From:** [ben_solo@gmail.com](mailto:ben_solo@gmail.com)  
**Subject: New box**

Hi, Rey. The box just arrived today, and the selection is perfect.

So perfect that I already pre-ordered all three of them earlier this year.

I think it’s pretty obvious that this service and I just aren’t meant to be, as great as it is. I really do appreciate all of your help, especially you taking the time to discuss books with me off the clock, but it’s probably time to call it.

Unless you’ve got a third suggestion?

Sincerely,  
Ben.

**To:**[ben_solo@gmail.com](mailto:ben_solo@gmail.com)  
**From:** [r_niima.custservice@resistancebooks.com](mailto:r_niima.custservice@resistancebooks.com)  
**Subject: Re: New box**

What can I say? I’m good at my job – too good, in this case.

I’ve got at least three more suggestions for you, if you’d like to keep going. And your box should have come with a return ticket, if you’d like to send it back; I don’t see the point in you keeping the duplicates, unless you have a friend with the same unique taste in books? I’d be happy to process the return and credit it to your account. Same goes for your first two boxes; I’m sorry I forgot to mention it earlier.

I’ve actually really missed talking about books with someone, so really, thank _you_ for humoring me. If you ever feel like debating the SWEU again, feel free to reach me at 555-3494. I like that things can get heated when we talk about those books, but it’s probably for the best if I don’t argue with a customer on my work email.

Best regards,  
Rey Niima,  
Customer service representative,  
Resistance Books.

* * *

** SEPTEMBER **

**Rey:**  
So technically we’re not supposed to tell anyone about this yet  
But  
Wait  
You still collect comics, right?

 **Ben:**  
You make me sound like a teenage boy.  
I collect graphic novels, yes.  
Why?

 **Rey:**  
You say potayto, I say potahto  
ANYWAY  
I know you’re not 100% happy with the customized box

 **Ben:  
**They’re your picks for me, of course I’m happy with them.

 **Rey:  
**Ben

 **Ben:**  
I am!  
I’m just not happy with the fact that I barely get any time to read.  
And when I do get an hour to myself, my brain is too tired for anything intellectual.

 **Rey:**  
You cutthroat lawyers and your ridiculous endless work  
Back to my point

 **Ben:  
**You have one?

 **Rey:**  
Very funny, Solo  
Okay so next month we’re announcing a special new box  
Limited time only  
And we’re only opening it up to 200 subscribers

 **Ben:**  
Sounds like a big deal.  
What do we get, hand-bound manuscripts?

 **Rey:**  
Even better  
Two trades and a hardcover, no extra charge

 **Ben:  
**You’re kidding me.

 **Rey:**  
Nope  
Completely serious  
You in?

 **Ben:**  
Hey, Rey?  
No offence but that’s the stupidest question you’ve ever asked me.

 **Rey:**  
Whatever, nerd  
I’ll sign you up

 **Ben:  
**You’re my favorite person right now, thank you.

 **Rey:**  
Careful, Solo  
Keep saying nice shit and I might actually start to like you

 **Ben:  
**And we wouldn’t want that, of course.

 **Rey:  
**Of course

* * *

** OCTOBER **

**To:**[ben_solo@gmail.com](mailto:ben_solo@gmail.com)  
**From:** [custservice@resistancebooks.com](mailto:custservice@resistancebooks.com)  
**Subject: Congratulations!**

Hi there, Ben!

Your assigned customer service representative recently entered you for a chance to win one of our 200 limited-time-only comic box subscriptions.

We’re very pleased to let you know that you made the cut! As of next month, you’ll start receiving two trade paperbacks and a hardcover volume each month for the remaining duration of your subscription. We also noticed that you have seven months left with us, and as a sign of our appreciation we’d like to offer you the chance to add on another five months at the standard rate of $29.99 per month in order to receive a full year’s worth of comic boxes. If you’re interested, please contact your assigned customer service representative by the 31st of this month.

Congratulations again, and we hope you enjoy your boxes!

Best regards,  
Paige Tico,  
Head of customer service,  
Resistance Books.

**Rey:  
**Did you get the email???

 **Ben:**  
Just read it. Can’t wait for the first box.  
Thanks, Rey.  
By the way, sign me up for the extension thing.

 **Rey:**  
Can you believe how far we’ve come?  
It feels like just yesterday that you were trying to cancel your subscription at every turn

 **Ben:**  
For what it’s worth, I’m glad I didn’t.  
So fucking glad.  
I wouldn’t have gotten to know you otherwise.

 **Rey:**  
Stop, you’ll make me cry  
Ben?  
I’m happy we’re friends too

* * *

** NOVEMBER **

**Rey:  
**Is it there yet?

 **Ben:**  
Rey. It’s been two hours.  
I haven’t even left the office yet.

 **Rey:  
**Okay, NOW is it there yet?

 **Ben:**  
Still at work.  
You’re the one who shipped it, can’t you track the package or something?

 **Rey:**  
I could  
But I think I prefer it this way

 **Ben:**  
Of course you do.  
You’re lucky I have no other friends.

 **Rey:**  
As if you’d stop talking to me even if you had a hundred other friends  
I’m your favorite

 **Ben:**  
Says who?  
Maybe Poe’s my favorite.  
I’ve known him since childhood, after all.

 **Rey:  
**Poe is a prankster and you fucking hate him

 **Ben:  
**I wouldn’t say _hate._

 **Rey:**  
Ben  
He stole your credit card and signed you up for a year’s worth of YA books

 **Ben:  
**And if he hadn’t done that, you and I would never have met.

 **Rey:**  
We haven’t  
Met, I mean  
Shit  
I don’t even know what you look like  
BRB, I’m gonna go stalk you on social

 **Ben:  
**Honestly, I just assumed you already did.

 **Rey:**  
Wow, I’m offended  
HOLY HELL, BEN

 **Ben:**  
So you’ve found me.  
If this is about the ears no, I don’t know what the fuck’s going on there either.  
No one in my family does.

 **Rey:**  
What ears?  
Your ears are FINE, silly  
I was talking about your hair  
Christ, do you shampoo with unicorn blood or something???

 **Ben:  
**That _would_ be very soulless lawyer of me, wouldn’t it?

 **Rey:**  
Shut up, you’re not soulless  
Funless, maybe, but I’d like to think I’m helping with that

 **Ben:**  
You are.  
In the interest of fairness, I’m going to stalk you too.

 **Rey:**  
Not much to see, but go right ahead  
Ben?  
Wow did I scare you off already?  
And here I thought that was a decent picture

 **Ben:**  
Shit, sorry.  
Got pulled into a meeting.  
It’s a great picture.

 **Rey:  
**You don’t have to say that

 **Ben:**  
Well, it is and I mean it.  
And…  
I hope this isn’t creepy but  
I love your smile.

 **Rey:**  
Not creepy at all  
By the way  
I like your eyes

* * *

** DECEMBER **

**To:**[ben_solo@gmail.com](mailto:ben_solo@gmail.com)  
**From** : [a_holdo@resistancebooks.com](mailto:a_holdo@resistancebooks.com)  
**Subject: Come celebrate the holidays with us!**

Hi, Ben!

Did you know that before Resistance Books went online and became the #1 book delivery service in the country, we were a tiny little indie store known as Gatalenta?

This holiday season, we’re returning to our roots – and we’d love for you to join us! Resistance Books will be participating in the annual Coruscant Christmas Market with our very own pop-up store from the 15th of December onwards!

This is a great time for you to come on by and check out the full range of our diverse offerings. And if something catches your eye, you’ll be able to bring it home with you for the same incredibly reasonable rate you know and love – pick any three books from our store for just $29.99!

We hope to see you there!

Warmest wishes,  
Amilyn Holdo,  
Founder and president,  
Resistance Books.

**Rey:  
**Hey, did you get the email about the pop-up store?

 **Ben:**  
Yeah, I was just about to text you.  
I just realized your boss is a friend of my mom’s.  
Anyway, this is probably extremely unlikely but  
Will you be there?

 **Rey:**  
Seriously?? That’s so weird  
And yes, actually  
I’ll be helping out 21st-25th, 11AM-8PM

 **Ben:  
**You’re working on Christmas?

 **Rey:**  
You know me  
Not like I’ve got anything else to do

 **Ben:**  
Okay, feel free to say no but…  
What if I go on Christmas?  
We’d get to discuss books in person  
And maybe after your shift we could hang out?  
I haven’t been to the CCM in years, but Maz’s Cantina used to make the best hot chocolates.

 **Rey:**  
Books, hot chocolate, and finally getting to meet my mysterious Internet stranger?  
Ben Solo, you’ve got yourself a date

 **Ben:**  
Great!  
I mean  
Cool. I can’t wait. See you then.

 **Rey:  
**See you!

* * *

**Ben:**  
Hey, so  
I just woke up and you’re not here  
Which is fine, it’s your choice to make  
And last night can be whatever you want it to be  
But… Rey, I know what I want it to be  
I know we moved fast, but yesterday meant a lot to me  
_You_ mean a lot to me  
I just… I just want to make sure you know that before you make a decision  
And the decision’s yours to make, completely  
I’ll go along with whatever you want  
As long as we’re at least still friends  
Because I don’t think I could bear to lose you entirely, Rey  
Fuck, I don’t think I could bear to lose you at all  
Shit, sorry, that’s too much  
I’ll stop now  
Just… text me back, please?

 **Rey:**  
Babe  
I’m in the kitchen  
Hurry up, breakfast is getting cold  
And Ben?  
You mean a lot to me too ❤

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a little over two thousand words and stopped being about _tsundoko_ about halfway through (if it even was in the first place), but it was such a fun idea to play with and I hope the format doesn’t get in the way of the story. I thought emails and texts would help me keep things short, but obviously that didn’t pan out.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading as always and I hope you liked it. Please don’t hesitate to leave a comment if you enjoyed this silly little writing experiment!


	13. Meliorism

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **DAY THIRTEEN: MELIORISM**  
>  (n.) the belief that the world gets better; the belief that humans can improve the world  
> For thewayofthetrashcompactor, who asked for something canon-verse, and for lulubellisima, who asked for a sequel to Day 7.

She won’t look at him.

It’s been nearly an hour – for him, at least – and Rey still hasn’t turned to look at him. There’s no telling how long she’s been up on the roof, staring blankly at the night sky; she’d excused herself after dinner as she always does to give him some quality time with his mother, and Ben hadn’t thought to go looking for her until he ran into Finn and Poe hours later and realized she wasn’t with them.

That was an hour ago, and it hadn’t taken him long to find her; now they’ve been here for a good forty-five minutes, and still Rey continues to stare at the stars while Ben alternates between shooting her worried glances and scrutinizing the sky in an attempt to figure out what’s caught her attention. He’s given her space and silence so far, even kept to his side of the bond rather than probe at their connection for hints, but it has to be past three in the morning at this point and he’s really hoping they’ll be able to get some sleep before their day starts.

“Sweetheart,” Ben finally says, the first word between them since they traded murmured greetings when he joined her earlier. “Are you ready to talk about it?”

Rey shrugs, eyes still on the stars as she shuffles closer to curl into his side and rest her head on his shoulder. “Not much to talk about,” she mumbles, voice raspy from disuse. For a moment Ben wonders if she’s been here ever since she left Leia’s quarters nearly four hours ago, and her next words seem to confirm his suspicion. “I’ve just been thinking about your mother, about her life.”

Fresh from one of his weekly conversations with his mother, most of which tend to be hushed with sorrow and heavy with regret, Ben wraps an arm around her waist and brings her as close as he can. “And?” he prompts gently as Rey curls both arms around him in return.

“She spent the first half of her life fighting one war, and the second half fighting another,” Rey whispers, her breath tickling his neck even as her words pierce his heart. “The galaxy was in chaos when she was born, and it’s still in chaos now, and I just… I was thinking…”

Finally, Rey tilts her head back to look at him, but the fear in her eyes almost makes him wish she hadn’t. “Ben… is this all there is? Is this all there’ll ever be? Your mother fought _so_ hard, she did everything she could to make the galaxy a better place, she lost everything _twice_ , and it still wasn’t enough. Nothing’s ever going to be enough, is it?”

Rey has a nickname on base, one that caught on when Poe Dameron refused to stop using it. _Rey of Sunlight,_ the Resistance calls her, and it goes hand-in-hand with that pretty little speech his mother likes to make about hope and the sun to form an uplifting story about the way Rey appeared to them in their darkest hour when all seemed lost on Crait.

To see the Resistance’s brightest star – his own burning sun – diminished into the sad, scared girl she left behind so long ago feels so wrong that Ben can’t help but pull her into his lap. “I thought I was supposed to be the hopeless one,” he reminds her, carding a hand through her hair in a gesture meant to comfort, part of a shorthand they’ve developed in the last two years to make up for a lifetime of being touch-starved.

“I know,” Rey sighs, not quite meeting his eyes. “I know, and I’m _sorry_ , I’m sorry but… it’s been two years, Ben,” she reminds him, fingers curling around the undone collar of his shirt. “ _Two years._ And I keep telling myself it won’t be much longer now, _can’t_ be much longer because it’s starting to feel like it might never end, like maybe we’re not going to win after all–”

“Hey,” Ben cuts her off, moves his hand to cup her cheek. “We _are_ , Rey. Okay? We _are_ going to win. Most of the galaxy sides with us now, and Hux is already _this close_ to going into hiding. We’re going to finish this, we’re going to _win_ , and then we’re going to live our lives, okay?” As far as pep talks go, it’s a pretty shitty one compared to the heartfelt things Rey whispers into his ear late at night when he turns to her for comfort and the beautiful pictures of their future she paints when he needs a reminder of what they’re fighting for, but he’s _trying_ and that’s all she’s ever asked of him.

An appreciative smile tugs at Rey’s lips even as she continues to question him. “But how do you know?” she asks, leaning into his touch. “How can you be so sure?”

Some days he’s not sure of anything, but with Rey by his side– “I refuse to believe that any universe kind enough to bring you into my life could be cruel enough to let us lose,” Ben says, as if anything could ever be that simple.

But everything is simple when it comes to Rey and him and the love that sent them racing across the galaxy for each other.

A sudden laugh bubbles past Rey’s lips, surprising even herself, and she wears a bright smile as she shakes her head at him. “Ben Solo, when did you become such a romantic?”

“Around the time I gave up the galaxy to be with you, I think,” he reminds her with a nonchalant shrug as Rey slides off his lap and returns to her place by his side. Hints of pink and orange are beginning to emerge from the horizon, a sign of the early morning sunrises found on Yavin-IV only during the longest days of mid-summer. It must be at least four in the morning by now, and there goes any hope of getting enough rest for the day ahead of them, but Ben finds he’s in no rush to leave the rooftop as Rey nestles into his side.

“And when did you become such an optimist?” she asks quietly as streaks of pastel bleed into the night sky.

It feels like a small miracle, watching the sun appear out of nowhere to fight off the darkness and bring light to the world once again. It’s a cycle, a pattern as old as time, and even if the war doesn’t end today or tomorrow or next week, Ben knows now that the darkness won’t last forever, that a brighter future awaits them.

“Promise things will get better?” Rey asks through a yawn, catching his fervent thought through their Bond.

Ben pulls her closer, presses a kiss to her temple. “We’ll _make_ them better,” he vows quietly, and no more words are needed as they watch the sun usher in a new day filled with promise and possibility.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had so many ideas for this sequel and so many directions I wanted to take it in, but by the time I got around to writing it, I’d forgotten everything. So here’s this mess instead; I spent longer trying to fix it than I did writing it and I’d love to keep editing until it’s somewhat decent, but I’m so dreadfully behind on this collection and I know if I don’t let go of this now and move on to the next ficlet, I never will.
> 
> So I hope this was okay-ish, and fingers crossed I’ll be back to my usual “kinda quality???” stuff by the next ficlet. As always, thank you for reading and please don’t hesitate to leave a comment if you have any thoughts you'd like to share.


	14. Dérive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **DAY FOURTEEN: DÉRIVE**  
>  (n.) lit. "drift"; a spontaneous journey where the traveller leaves their life behind for a time to let the spirit of the landscape and architecture attract and move them  
> For msdes, who asked for a modern AU "where Ben is a frequent customer at the restaurant where Rey works. Little does she know he only goes there because of her".  
> Bonus: this somehow turned into a Waffle House fic because this fandom is ridiculous and I love all of you for it.

It takes Ben three days to build up the courage to use her name.

“Thanks, Rey,” he says as the graveyard shift waitress drops off his order, and it might be the single most difficult thing Ben’s done since he left home three weeks ago but fuck if it’s not worth all the self-doubt and clammy palms just to see the way her eyes light up when he addresses her.

“You’re very welcome, PB&C,” she replies with that smile of hers that’s nearly as blinding as the beckoning lights of the Waffle House they’re currently in, the brightest thing for miles and miles in this particular stretch of highway.

He’d caught a scribbled _PB &C _on her order pad when he first placed his order three nights ago, and yesterday when he’d walked in sometime after three in the morning the line cook had abruptly dropped his conversation with Rey to announce, in a very poor attempt at a whisper, that Mr. PB&C had returned. Ben’s not sure if his order is actually that noteworthy or if he’s the only customer whose name they don’t know, but either way he figures she deserves to know his name now that he’s used hers.

“It’s, um,” he musters the courage to speak up before she can tell him to enjoy his meal and walk off, and the look of pleasant surprise on her face gives him the push needs. “It’s Ben, actually. I’m Ben. Hi.”

Now would be a good time for the earth to open up and swallow him whole. At least he has the self-control to sit on his hands to prevent himself from accompanying that stupid, lame _hi_ with a stupid, lame wave, as if he’s not being weird enough already.

But the judgmental look he’s waiting for never arrives, and instead Rey’s smile somehow grows softer, kinder. “Well then,” she says just as nine bright-eyed, slightly tipsy college kids barrel into the sleepy diner, signaling the end of the three-to-four lull. “Hi, Ben,” Rey tells him with the slightest hint of laughter in her voice even as the raucous group begins to clamber into booths and push tables together with no heed for the terrible screeching sound they’re causing. “I should go deal with that, but… I’ll see you tomorrow?”

He shouldn’t still be here tomorrow; hell, he shouldn’t still be here now. But it’s not like he actually has anywhere to be, and this sleepy sorta-town with its Super 8 and its dying strip mall and its welcoming Waffle House is better than driving aimlessly in an old truck that holds too many memories.

So Ben shrugs and tells her, “Yeah, see you then,” and promises himself that tomorrow will be the last day, that he’s not going to let himself get stuck in another dead-end town after all the trouble he went through to leave the last one.

It’s a doomed effort from the start.

“So, what’s your story?” Rey asks him on day twelve, sliding into his booth with a cup of tea and a plate of bacon. She’s allowed one fifteen-minute break every night, and sometime between him giving her his name and asking about her day, Rey decided to start spending it with him. That was four days ago, long enough for him to have realized – and accepted – the fact that he’s beginning to develop a crush for the very first time in his life at the ripe old age of twenty-two.

“Just your typical rich brat who ran away from home when he realized all the money in the world can’t make up for absentee parents,” Ben tells her with a practiced shrug because okay, fine, he’s been rehearsing this conversation in his mind for a while now. It was only a matter of time, of course, with Rey being as friendly as she is, and this is the closest he can get to the truth without revealing the fact that he still spends hours a day in his tiny motel room staring at his mother’s contact information, with one thumb hovering over the call button for what feels like hours on end.

Something tells him Rey figures it out anyway, the fact that the wound is fresher than he lets on. But she just smiles and digs into her food, says, “Ah, one of _those_ ,” between bites of crispy bacon with a knowing smile and kind eyes, and Ben thinks maybe he’ll stay a while longer after all.

On day twenty, he finally works up the courage to return the favor. “What’s _your_ story?” he asks as they split a second order of peanut butter and chocolate waffles, the ones Rey used to tease him for ordering until he convinced her to try a bite.

“Oh, you know,” Rey shrugs, and her casualness isn’t nearly as rehearsed as his. “Hippie parents moved to an off-the-grid military base-turned-commune, died of alcohol poisoning, left me in the hands of the junkyard boss hired by the government to clear out the base. Just your typical orphan story.”

“ _Shit_ , Rey,” he hisses without thinking, and immediately drops his eyes to the table. “Sorry, I didn’t mean– that was rude of me, I’m sorry–”

“S’okay,” she tells him as she steals the last bite; he’s been letting her have it ever since the first time they shared food, anyway. “I mean, it’s a lot to take in. I’d be weirded out if you _didn’t_ have a reaction.” And then, after a beat– “Anyway, I left a year ago, so it’s nothing. Feels like a different lifetime, even.”

The worst part is that he can’t figure out if she’s actually telling the truth. On the one hand, this is bright and sunny Rey who looks like nothing in the world could phase her; on the other, he’s seen a familiar haunted look in her eyes whenever she zones out for a minute. But she was kind enough not to push him when he shared his story, and Ben likes to think he can be kind too – for her, at least.

“A year ago?” he asks, and Rey shoots him a thankful smile as she leans back against the booth. “Have you been here ever since?”

She laughs, and Ben thinks he would happily stay in this odd little highway town for the rest of his life just for that sound. “Oh no, not at all. God, I’d be bored to tears if I stayed that long, I think. No,” Rey says as she begins to stack up their plates and cutlery, her fifteen minutes coming to an end. “I only arrived a week before you showed up, I think. See, when I left Jakku – that’s the base, by the way – I took a truck with me, ancient broken thing I’d been working on for years. The plan was to go where the wind takes me, drive from coast to coast to see what the world has to offer, that kind of thing, you know?”

Oh, he knows.

“But then the old thing broke down, so I’ve been stuck here ever since,” Rey laments with a sigh. “The town mechanic’s really sweet, he said I’m free to use the garage and whatever tools I need for free so long as I pay for the parts, but I’m beginning to worry that it might not be worth the trouble.”

“Why not?” Ben asks as she slides out of the booth and chugs down the last of her tea.

Rey gathers up their plates. “Something new keeps breaking every other day. Unless I can get another truck for cheap, it looks like I’m stuck here for now. I mean, there’s always hitchhiking,” she says, her nose scrunched up at the thought, “but I don’t know how I feel about getting into a stranger’s car–”

The words escape him before he’s even had time to form a plan. “I’m not a stranger.”

She stares at him for a beat, laughs despite the question on her face. “I know, Ben.”

His ears feel like they’re on fire, but the words keep coming anyway. “I mean– it’s not hitchhiking if you’re not strangers, right? It’d be more like… a road trip.”

“A road trip?” Rey echoes dubiously, a rare instance of her smile dimming as her features twist into something more thoughtful.

“Yeah, a road trip. Coast to coast, wherever the wind takes us, right? That’s what I was doing anyway, before I found you–”

And this, _this_ is why he needs to keep his fucking mouth shut because now it’s too late, it’s out there and god, he can’t ever look her in the eye again–

“Ben?” she asks quietly, and with his eyes fixed firmly on the table he can see her shaking hand reaching for him, hesitantly landing on his forearm before she wraps her fingers around him and squeezes. “Ben,” Rey says again, waits for him to look up at her before she goes on. “It’s been three weeks. Why are you still here?”

There are a lot of things he could say: _because the waffles are to die for, because I needed a break from driving, because you were laughing when I came in that first night and it made me want to smile for the first time since I made my mother cry–_

Only that last one is true, and he can never, ever tell her that.

Or, well… not yet, anyway. Because the way Rey’s looking at him, with a plea in her eyes and her lips slightly parted in anticipation, makes him think that maybe this isn’t the end just yet, maybe there’s more to their story than this Waffle House in the middle of nowhere.

“I…” he takes a blind leap of faith, turns his hand around and laces their fingers together, draws courage from the tiny hint of a smile playing on Rey’s lips as she looks down at their intertwined hands. “I didn’t want to leave you.”

And somehow, those turn out to be the magic words.

.  
.  
.

It’s day twenty-seven, seven days since Rey put in her one-week notice out of sheer courtesy. He’s got a gas station map in his glove box, along with a Sharpie for her to chart their course, and Rey’s things sit in the backseat next to his, two lonely duffel bags that somehow look less sad next to each other.

Ben pulls into the empty gravel lot next to their Waffle House one last time, walks in to find Rey waiting for him at the bar with a plate of PB&C.

“To adventure,” she announces with a blinding smile, toasting him with a forkful of waffle.

He laughs, wraps one arm around her waist as he snags the waffle off her fork and muffles her indignant protests with a kiss. “To adventure,” Ben echoes with a smile of his own.

 _And to home_ , he can’t help but think as Rey leans in for another syrupy kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is nearly two thousand words and it's a world away from my original plan, but I'm... kinda okay with the way it turned out - even though Waffle House and the prompt word barely even figure in. Oops.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it, and thanks for stopping by! As usual, please don't hesitate to leave a comment if you liked this.


	15. Erlebnisse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **DAY FIFTEEN: ERLEBNISSE**  
>  (n.) the experiences, positive or negative, that we feel most deeply, and through which we truly live; not mere experiences, but Experiences  
> For varksvader, who asked for a modern AU “ where Rey and Ben come out of the movie theater, and one of them is highly emotional after watching it”.

It’s her fourth time watching the movie, but Rey finds herself just as overwhelmed as she was the first time around. The last minute of the end credits is still rolling, a slow score pouring out of the speakers as she and Rose get up to join the crowd filing out of the theater in the kind of zombie-like crawl that’s to be expected after a midnight showing.

It’s that one precious moment between fantasy and reality, that small window of time after two hours of escapism and before real life returns with a vengeance, and Rey is content to savor it in silence until–

“A total and utter waste of time,” a man boldly proclaims in a sharp accent as he and his friend join the line, exiting from the aisle just above her and Rose. “At least the originals had a _proper_ villain instead of this wannabe–”

Before Rey can lunge forward and correct the shallow idiot, a hand wraps around her forearm and holds her back with surprising strength. “Don’t,” Rose mutters as her blunt fingernails dig into Rey’s skin. “Just… let it go, okay? They’re probably just casual viewers who don’t know what they’re talking about anyway–”

“I can’t believe they threw away decades of expanded universe lore for this bullshit,” the man’s companion agrees, his voice heavy with disdain. “Kylo Ren is probably just based off one of the writer’s Sith personas from when they were thirteen or something,” he scoffs dismissively just as the group of them step into the blinding lights of the outside world, and Rose wisely lets go of Rey’s arm with nothing more than a defeated sigh.

“Just don’t get us banned,” is her final request as Rey steps forward to tap the second man on his shoulder. He turns around without her having to speak up to get his attention, and regards her with a look that’s part wary, part weary as he crosses his arms over his surprisingly broad chest.

Rey should’ve seen that coming when she had to reach all the way up to tap his shoulder.

“Can I help you?” the man asks, and the hint of a smirk tugging at his lips is enough to snap Rey out of her observation of his dark locks and thick lips. She offers him a sickeningly sweet smile instead, one meant to unsettle rather than charm.

“Well, first of all, they didn’t throw away the whole EU,” Rey informs him, keeping her customer service smile on, “which you might’ve known if you had bothered to read the full announcement when it was released rather than skim the headlines and immediately head over to Reddit to whine with your fellow purists.”

The man’s hands fall to his side as his flame-haired friend with the grating, carefully affected accent continues to walk away, either not realizing that he’s leaving his companion behind or not caring.

“Second, Kylo Ren is nothing like Darth Vader because he’s _not_ a Sith,” she points out a little smugly even as a part of her realizes she’s gaining steam a little too fast. “In fact, he’s not even fully Dark, which might be why he doesn’t check off all of your traditional, _basic_ boxes of what a villain should look like. And by the way, hating Kylo Ren doesn’t make you a better fan than the rest of us; it just makes you one of the literal _dozens_ of whiny gatekeeper fans I’ve had this conversation with in the last two weeks–”

“I don’t hate him,” the man cuts in quite unexpectedly. If anything, Rey had been prepared for a sneered dismissal of her as a fake fan; the explanation that follows instead is unlike any reaction she’s gotten over the past two weeks. “I think he’s an emotional mess and he makes for a weak villain, but as a character there’s obviously layers to uncover and room for him to grow so…” he trails off with a shrug that disturbs the hair resting on his shoulder and causes a thick lock of hair to flop into his face.

It’s… surprisingly adorable.

“Oh,” Rey mouths to herself, still trying to catch up to the fact that she’s no longer in attack mode. “ _Oh_ ,” she repeats audibly, and then tentatively adds, “Actually, if you _are_ interested in him, they released a pre-movie novel that covers his early childhood and some of the factors–”

“Solo!” the ginger friend snaps from down the hall, near the counter. “Please don’t tell me you’ve gotten into a debate with your fellow nerds, I simply don’t have the patience for this childishness–”

“Fuck off for one minute, Hux,” her unexpected stranger calls back with a dismissive wave of his hand before turning back to Rey. “So I, um, I’ve got to go but… would you maybe want to talk about this some other time? You seem like you actually know your shit, and believe it or not, the Reddit purist crowd gets kind of annoying after a while,” he grins, as if she hadn’t lumped him in with them just minutes ago.

Rey doesn’t usually like surprises – a childhood filled with instability and unexpected changes will do that to you – but something in her gut tells her that this man might just change that.

Gut feelings – now those she likes and trusts. So against all reason, Rey holds out her hand and says, “Give me your phone, I’ll give myself a call and we’ll see how I feel about this in the morning.”

She texts him a list of pre-movie reading material as soon as she gets home.

* * *

“I’m just saying,” Rey shrugs as they walk out of the second movie two years later, hand-in-hand like the touchy-feely couple they’ve been for the past eighteen months, “I called it right from the start. Rendemption, here we come!” she declares a little too loudly for the rest of the midnight crowd, judging by their glares.

Or maybe they’re just the kind of haters she would’ve gotten into a fight with two years ago, and it’s only her giant hulk of a boyfriend that’s keeping them from debating her now.

“Okay, so _maybe_ he’s not as hopeless as I thought he was,” Ben concedes with a soft smile that doesn’t belong on the face of someone who’s just lost a long-standing disagreement with his gloating girlfriend. But then again, Rey’s always gotten the feeling that Ben has been rooting for Kylo to turn his life around just as much as she has; maybe even more, given the parallels he sees between them that he’d once confided in her about.

She stops short just outside of the doors, much to the displeasure of the other grumbling moviegoers, and pulls Ben aside. “Hey,” Rey says gently, reaches up with her free hand to cup Ben’s jaw. “No one’s hopeless. Not Kylo Ren,” she whispers, lets it linger for a beat before she works up the nerve to add, “and definitely not you.”

There’s a terrible beat of silence, a moment suspended in time as their lives fork out into two paths, and Rey has no way of knowing which one they’re taking until–

Ben smiles, turns to press his lips to her palm. “You’re my own personal Kira, aren’t you?” he murmurs gently, bringing his other hand to rest over hers. “The only one who believes in me no matter what.”

Rey nods and stretches up on her tiptoes to give him a quick peck on the lips. “Does that mean you’ll leave the past behind for me?” she paraphrases the movie, hiding her nerves behind a teasing note.

It’s been two months since he left Snoke’s company, two months of him trying to decide if he wants to keep going down the dark road he was on when they first met or if it’s time for him to reclaim old noble intentions which have been gathering dust ever since Snoke hired him right out of law school.

“It means I’d give you the whole galaxy if I could,” Ben promises her with that boyish smile of his that lights up her world and warms her from the inside.

“I don’t need the galaxy,” Rey tells him as she draws the hand still in hers around her waist instead and tucks herself against his side as they begin to walk again. “Just you.”

Ben laughs quietly, his warm breath tickling the shell of her ear before he presses a kiss to her temple. “Sweetheart, you've had me since the very first moment.”

* * *

They linger in their seats long after the music ends and the screen goes dark, taking some time to process the end of the trilogy that’s come to mean so much to them.

“Ready?” Rey eventually asks when she notices that they’re the last ones left, and Ben merely replies with a nod and a squeeze of her hand as he helps her up and they begin to leave the darkened hall behind.

“God, that was _perfect_ ,” she sighs as they leave the theater, disposing of her empty extra-large popcorn bucket before she turns to Ben to see if he’s smiling as hard as she is now.

He’s not.

In fact, Ben’s the farthest thing from smiling right now, what with his bloodshot eyes and tear-stained cheeks.

“Baby!” Rey gasps in concern, doing her best to reach up and cup his face with both hands. “What is it, is something wrong–”

Ben turns into her touch, nuzzles her palm before he reaches up to take her hands in his and lower them back to their sides. “It’s okay,” he assures her after a beat, and Rey watches with slow-dawning relief as his lips curve into a smile. “It’s okay, _I’m_ okay,” Ben says with a little laugh, a confusing note of wonder in his voice.

“Then why…?”

“I just… you were right, it _was_ perfect,” Ben agrees with a sigh of his own. “And seeing Kylo at the end there, with Kira by his side and their whole lives ahead of them… I guess it just reminded me of how far we’ve come and how lucky I am,” he shrugs, still wearing that beatific smile that reminds her of the one he’d worn as he watched her walk down the aisle towards him.

“Oh, Ben,” Rey says softly, shakes her head with a fond smile before she tips her chin at him in a gesture he’s grown all too familiar with in the last few months of her pregnancy. At eight months, it’s gotten significantly harder for her to reach up on her tiptoes; any vertical kissing is only made possible by Ben bending all the way down to meet her.

It seems like a waste for all that effort on his part to result in a chaste peck, but they _are_ still in public.

“Let’s get you home, Mrs. Solo,” Ben murmurs against her lips before he stands upright and wraps a protective arm around her.

Rey leans into him with a sigh, rests her head on his shoulder as Ben shuffles them forward. “I say this with all the love in my heart,” she prefaces as they step out into the chilly December night, “but I can’t believe I’m the pregnant one yet you’re the one who cried over a movie.”

Ben huffs as he pulls the keys out of his back pocket and unlocks the car parked just a few feet down the street; he’d waited nearly half an hour to get a spot right outside for her sake. “Hey now, you know better than anyone else that _Star Wars_ isn’t just a movie to us.”

It really, really isn’t. They’d met because of these movies, bonded and fallen in love over them, used their understanding of these fictional characters as a shorthand to communicate their deepest fears and wildest dreams with each other. Every fiery defense of Kylo Ren that Rey has ever delivered was in part inspired by and meant for Ben, and it was his chance at redemption that helped Rey finally convince Ben that there’s no such thing as the point of return.

In a way, _Star Wars_ is as real to them as anything they’ve actually lived through, as fundamental to their relationship and their life together as any other experience they’ve shared.

Hell, if it weren’t for these movies, they might never even have met.

Rey places a hand over her stomach, thinks of everything she’s been blessed with ever since a chance meeting at a midnight showing of a sci-fi movie about space and lasers and hope.

“Yeah,” she tells her husband as he helps her into the passenger seat and carefully secures the seat belt over their daughter. “Yeah, it’s definitely more than just a movie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is more than two thousand words. I don’t even know what happened, you guys; I sat down to write two ficlets and ended up spending all my time on just one. This isn’t even a ficlet anymore, technically.
> 
> But... I’m kinda happy with it? It’s not perfect, far from my best work, but it ended up closer to my original outline than anything else I’ve written recently, so I’m okay with it. I hope you are too. Thanks for reading, and please don’t hesitate to leave a comment if you enjoyed this!
> 
> PS - we've still got five prompts left, so if you'd like a holiday ficlet of your very own, feel free to [head over to Tumblr and see what's left on the list!](https://eleanor-writes-stuff.tumblr.com/post/180619997915/december-writing-plans-a-reylo-ficlet-collection)


	16. Sophrosyne

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **DAY SIXTEEN: SOPHROSYNE**  
>  (n.) a healthy state of mind, characterized by self-control, moderation, and a deep awareness of one’s true self, and resulting in true happiness  
> For nancylovesreylo, who requested a canon-compliant ficlet where Ben finds “this state of mind (with Rey's help, of course!), after a lifetime of struggling (...)”, and lightaroundthecorner, who asked for a redeemed Ben in or after IX.

The doorbell rings just as Ben cracks two eggs into a pan, and Rey slides off the kitchen counter before he can so much as turn around.

“I’ll get it,” she assures him, dropping a quick kiss on his shoulder as she walks past.

Ben eyes what’s left of the carton of eggs and decides that they have just enough for a kid-sized omelet. He’s pretty sure his mother wouldn’t have let Meira leave without eating breakfast, but she’s a growing girl who’s been known to put away anything her dad makes for her, so it’s best to be prepared.

“Mama!” A precious, familiar voice shrieks in joy from the living room, and he can just about make out Rey’s laugh as their daughter jumps into her arms. Ben braces himself, turns off the stove and steps away from the counter, because any second now–

Meira comes running into the kitchen and barrels right into him, clinging to one leg like the little monkey that she is. He likes to joke that this part is all Rey, but she’s usually quick to remind him that he’s just as clingy and cuddly and really, between the two of them Meira never stood a chance.

“Daddy, daddy, look what gramma did!” she tells him, tugging excitedly at his hand to guide it through the dozen or so little braided loops on her head. It’s an ancient Alderaanian style he’d never bothered to master, one the Crown Princess would only have worn on very select occasions at a very young age; Leia might very well be the only person in the known galaxy who still knows how to do it, and the idea of his mother combing through Meira’s hair and filling her head with stories of their shared heritage warms his heart even more than the sight of his overexcited daughter.

“You look beautiful, starlight,” Ben murmurs with a smile as he bends down on one knee, earning a little giggle when he playfully tucks one loop over Meira’s ear. “Were you good for gramma?” he asks just as Rey enters the kitchen, alone by the looks of it. He would have liked to say hi to his mother, but then Ben’s reminded of the fact that she lives just two floors above them and he gets to see her all the time now, and for a moment that’s almost enough to distract him from the fact that Meira’s suddenly lost her smile and is quite fixated on the ground for no apparent reason.

Rey crosses the room to join them, gets down on both knees and holds her arms wide open. “Your grandmother said there’s something you’d like to tell us,” she mentions lightly as Meira steps into her arms and hides her face in her mother’s shirt.

They share a look over their daughter’s head. _She had her first accident,_ Rey whispers into their Bond, running a soothing hand up and down Meira’s back for a while before she coaxes the uncharacteristically quiet five-year-old to stand back and face her parents.

“You know you can tell us anything, little love,” Rey says gently, pulling free the braid Ben had looped around Meira’s ear just moments before.

“We won’t be mad,” Ben adds reassuringly, holding out one hand for Meira to wrap her little fingers around his thumb the way she would clutch at a favorite toy or safety blanket if she had one right now.

Meira slowly lifts her eyes from the ground. “That’s what gramma told me,” she mumbles, still not quite looking at her parents. “She said you’ll love me no matter what I do because that’s how being a parent works.”

_Come home. We miss you._

There was a time when Ben didn’t understand how a parent’s love works, couldn’t fathom how boundless and forgiving it can be. Now, though– “Well, your gramma is a very smart woman, Meira,” he says, pushing the past to the back of his mind. “There’s nothing in this world that could make us stop loving you, okay? So why don’t you just tell us what happened, starlight?”

Meira busies herself with the important task of dancing her fingertips up and down his palm, forever hoping to unlock a secret tickle spot that’ll disarm him the way her tiny hands on Rey’s feet can send her mother into a fit of shrieks and giggles. He and Rey wait patiently, trading wordless waves of reassurance over the Bond until–

“Ibrokegramma’scrown,” Meira confesses in a single breath, and puts up a token amount of resistance when Ben curls a finger under her chin and brings her eyes up.

“I just…” she trails off, squirming under her parents’ attentive looks. “It’s so pretty, and I wanted to see it again after gramma went to sleep, so I snuck into her room and tried to reach for it but it was too far away but then it started moving but it was stuck but I kept reaching and then suddenly it broke and half of it got stuck in the shelf but the other half broke into a lot of tiny pieces and they were all flying towards me and I screamed and then gramma woke up and then she jumped in front of me and all the tiny pieces hit her back and I’m _sorry_ , I didn’t mean to, I’m so so so so sorry,” Meira sobs miserably, her big, round eyes filling with tears as she flings herself into Ben’s arms.

_Will you help me?_

As far as awakenings go, it’s a fairly concerning one. Meira has always been Force-sensitive, they’d known that much the second Rey realized she was pregnant without even taking a test, but as the years went by and nothing manifested, Ben had started to hope–

But none of that matters now. Right now he’s got a crying, scared daughter in his arms, and that’s much more important than the ramifications of this incident and the lump of fear sitting heavy in his stomach.

_Yes. Anything._

.  
.  
.

Later that night, with his head in his wife’s lap, Ben lets his thoughts wander. “Can you imagine how scared they must’ve been?” he sighs as Rey begins to card her fingers through his hair, and sends her an ancient image of his parents, young and lost and utterly unprepared as they watched their colicky child trash a room with nothing but his mind. He shouldn’t have that memory, shouldn’t have been able to retain something from that young an age, but then again there’s a lot of things Ben shouldn’t have been capable of at that age.

 _But we’re not them,_ Rey whispers through the Bond, one finger tracing the shell of his ear. “And Meira isn’t you, _cyar’ika_ ,” she says out loud, guessing where his thoughts are headed before he can even travel down that route. It’s an old fear, one that had taken root the day Rey first told him about their baby and lingered all the way until the day she carefully passed Meira into his arms, their little bundle of light, and suddenly all of Ben’s thoughts and fears and nightmares were completely, abruptly silenced as he finally understood–

How his father caressed his face even as he breathed his last breath.

How his mother welcomed him back with open arms even after everything.

How there was – _is_ – nothing he wouldn’t do for his child, nothing that could possibly come between them, nothing he wouldn’t give his life to protect her from.

“She’ll be perfectly fine,” Rey utters calmly, confidently, as their newly Force-awakened child sleeps next door, “because her father would never let anything happen to her.”

And Ben knows, with a certainty he reserves for very, very few things, that Rey is absolutely right about him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> True story: it took me longer to write that last bit than it did to write the thousand words preceding it. I must’ve rewritten the ending _at least_ ten times; it’s still bugging me a bit, but I think this is as good as it’s going to get.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it! Please don’t hesitate to leave a comment; ‘tis the season for giving and all of the kindness, support, and encouragement I've received from you guys so far has truly been the greatest gift of the season. <3
> 
> PS - In keeping with Leia and Benjamin, I picked the Hebrew name Meira for this particular Reylo baby. I found several meanings for it, but all of them had something to do with light - so Ben's got his Rey of sunshine, and his Meira of starlight.


	17. Firgun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **DAY SEVENTEEN: FIRGUN**  
>  (n.) the act of sharing in or even contributing to someone else’s pleasure or fortune, with a purely generous heart and without jealousy; or of sharing credit fairly  
> For always-aaack-for-everlark and anon, who both asked for a modern AU.

The sentencing takes less than half an hour.

The judge reads out his sentence, Snoke is led away by the bailiffs, and just like that Rey finds herself on the other side of a war that’s consumed and shaped every aspect of her life for the past two years. The courtroom is a flurry of activity, cameras going off non-stop as everyone tries to capture the moment: the stone-cold expression on Gwen Phasma’s face as she watches her client get dragged away, the poorly-concealed fear in Hux’s eyes as he comes to grips with the fact that he’s next, the relief and victory and _joy_ radiating off Leia and her team in waves as decades of turmoil finally pay off.

As the journalist responsible for the exposé that started it all, Rey knows that she’s more than welcome to join the celebration, that the Senator would greet her with open arms and warm thanks. Instead, she takes advantage of the chaos to slip out of the room and discreetly make her way out of the courthouse. It’s a ten-minute walk to Maz’s Diner, a cozy little spot that has somehow turned into her second home; Rey would bet anything that her anonymous source is already nursing his second cup of coffee there, watching the proceedings on the ancient, boxy TV hanging precariously from the ceiling.

Maz is the first one to look up when the tinkling bell announces Rey’s arrival.

“There she is, the woman of the hour!” the old woman cheers, prompting a round of applause from all of the regulars who’ve gotten to know Rey over the last two years. She nods and smiles at familiar faces as she makes her way to the bar, until finally she’s face to face with her source.

“You did it,” Ben says quietly, a genuine smile on his face as he sets down his coffee to wrap his arms around her. Rey steps into the embrace, lingers for a moment before she presses a kiss to her boyfriend’s cheek and steps back.

“ _We_ did it,” she reminds him as she sits next to him, slipping one hand into Ben’s while the other reaches out to steal his coffee. “This would never have happened without you.”

Ben ducks his head, dismisses her words as always. “You would’ve gotten your story with or without me,” he claims, always so quick to paint her as an unflappable go-getter and downplay his own part in the case.

Today justice was finally served to a man who’s been breaking all the rules for decades, and Rey has just about had enough of him pretending he isn’t the one to thank for it. “Hey, enough of that,” she says with a frown, giving Ben’s hand a squeeze. “Baby, you know we would never have gotten him without you. You risked _everything_ to help me.”

It’s been two years since she received that first anonymous email offering up incriminating evidence on First Order in exchange for an assured takedown of Snoke, but there are days when Rey still can’t wrap her mind around the fact that his trusted right-hand man had been to one to orchestrate the whole thing, risking his job and even his life to get her the information she needed to blow the lid off Snoke’s elaborate cover-ups.

“You lost everything, and no one even knows–”

Ben raises their joined hands, presses a kiss to the inside of her wrist. “I had nothing to lose, sweetheart,” he reminds her. “Not before you, anyway. And as long as the only person who matters knows the truth, that’s enough for me.”

Rey hesitates for a moment, takes a deep breath to steel herself before she says, “Make that _persons._ ”

There’s an awful moment of silence, and then Ben drops their hands down to the counter and looks at her warily. “Rey, you didn’t.”

“I had to! She needed to vouch for me and the only way she could do that was if I told her exactly who my source was, and besides, Ben, she’s _so_ proud of you–”

“She…” Ben croaks, clears his throat and tries again even as he refuses to meet her eye. “She is?”

Rey moves closer, practically dangling off the edge of her seat as she takes Ben’s face in her hands and coaxes him to look at her. “Of course she is,” she says gently, offering him a smile. “Ben, what you did was just… so brave, and amazing, and _monumental_. Baby, how could she _not_ be proud of the man her son’s become?”

Ben’s eyes grow bright with emotion, and she leans in, presses her forehead to his to help center him. As comfortable as they’ve gotten with all the regulars, she knows he wouldn’t want anyone else to catch him fighting off tears.

“You’ve done _so_ much, Ben,” Rey whispers, sliding her hands into his hair. “You deserve to take credit for it, okay? Not in front of the world, not if you don’t want to, but at the very least you deserve to have the people you love know the truth about you.”

“Well,” Ben says shakily, pulls back to give her a small smile. “Now they both do.”

The moment is interrupted, as most of their moments are, by Maz. “A healthy breakfast for our champions!” she announces grandly, appearing out of nowhere to set down two huge plates laden with every kind of breakfast food the diner serves. “You kids better not stop coming here just because you’re done with all that unpleasantness, you hear? I fully expect you to keep showing up and disgusting everyone with how lovey-dovey you are.”

Rey drops her hands from Ben’s hair, slides back into her chair as blood rushes to her cheeks. Beside her, Ben just laughs, well used to Maz’s teasing by now.

“Nothing could keep us away,” he promises the old woman as she tops up his coffee and slides Rey a cup of her own. “We’ll be coming here when we’re old and grey.”

“See that you do,” Maz says firmly even as a fond smile softens her features, and with one final pat of Ben’s hand she wanders off to deal with her other diners.

“When we’re old and grey, huh?” Rey asks, quirking an eyebrow at Ben as he begins to dig into the food.

She’s teasing, of course; after months of trying to maintain a professional relationship and dance around their feelings, Rey has known since their very first kiss that Ben is it for her, that there’s no one else. But they’ve been so busy prepping for the case that she’d never actually found the time to tell him so, and Ben certainly hasn’t said anything about their future either.

Funny, how they both just assumed – _knew_ – that there would be a future for them.

Ben sets down his cutlery, turns to her with that smile she’s lucky enough to wake up to in the morning. “When we’re old and grey,” he repeats, as if it’s a given that they’ll be spending the rest of their lives together.

As far as Rey’s concerned, it is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I... have no idea what this is, honestly. Some of the fills have been _inspired by_ the prompts rather than based on them, but this one’s _loosely inspired by_ at best.
> 
> I really hope everyone enjoyed this anyway, and thank you for reading. As always, please don’t hesitate to like/reblog/comment!


	18. Koyaanisqatsi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **DAY EIGHTEEN: KOYAANISQATSI**  
>  (n.) nature out of balance; a way of life so unbalanced that you need a new way  
> A modern AU for valeriacatulli, who requested “something involving Reylo being musicians or arty filmmakers”.

It really is a beautiful night for an engagement party.

The Cantina’s warm, welcoming glow reaches across the street, beams of golden light coming to a stop right before Rey’s feet where she leans against the window of a closed health food specialist. The night is surprisingly cool for once; not cold enough to necessitate a jacket, but nice enough that her hair isn’t plastered to the back of her neck. The streets are quiet save for Cantina and the club down the street, since everything else in the area closes by eight at the latest on a weeknight.

Rey leans against the window with a sigh, tips her head back to look up at the moon. It really is a beautiful night, perfect for Finn and Poe and the thirty family and friends they’ve chosen to share their happiness with tonight.

From the window Rey spies Poe’s father standing up and carefully clinking a spoon against his glass. Time for speeches, apparently, and Rey knows she should get back in there, knows that it’ll be too obvious if the maid of honor stays away from the party any longer, but–

“Was Cinderella not invited to the party?” a voice asks from somewhere behind her, somewhere in the darkened alley between the health store and the club.

With her heart racing and her body poised for flight, it takes Rey a moment to place a voice she would recognize anywhere in the world. She peels herself away from the window, carefully ventures closer and squints into the darkness until a low chuckle reaches her ears, accompanied by an achingly familiar figure stepping into the dim light of the sidewalk.

“Hello, Rey,” Kylo Ren slurs, half his body weight supported by the brick exterior of _Silencer_ , the club he must’ve just emerged from. “What’re you doing out here, creeping on those innocent people?”

She is _not_ creeping, but Rey finds she can’t quite be bothered to deny his allegation when there’s a much more pressing matter to attend to. “Are you…” she steps closer, takes in Kylo’s glazed eyes and slumped posture with slow-building incredulity until– “Are you _drunk_?”

He shrugs, the motion clumsy and almost comical on his alcohol-loosened limbs. “So what if… if I am? You’re not my _mom_ , you can’t tell me what to do.”

Rey doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry or turn her back on him and leave him to fend for himself. “So what if you–” she echoes with a faint note of hysteria in her voice. “Oh my god, Kylo, what the fuck is _wrong_ with you? I’ve heard the rumors, but I never thought–” _never thought I wouldn’t recognize the man you’ve become._

The Kylo she knew – the _Ben_ she knew – would never have gotten drunk. He’d seen what it had done to his grandfather, seen what it had done to his father, and vowed to never, ever lose control of himself to such an extent that he could not be held accountable for his behavior, that he had an excuse to be an asshole.

 _That_ was the man she fell in love with. This childish, clumsy, lumbering oaf of an idiot? This one she doesn’t know at all, hasn’t even spoken to since the day she walked out on him and their life together.

“Aww, you kept… kept _tabs_ on me,” Kylo hiccups, clapping a hand over his mouth about ten seconds too late. It’d be funny if it didn’t feel so _wrong_ to see him this way. “I kept… kept up with you too, you know? Saw your new video, the one where you said the city is gonna fall into the sea. _Boosh_ ,” he purses his lips, attempts to mimic a crashing wave with his mouth and his hands.

Rey crosses her arms over her chest. “It doesn’t fall into the sea, the sea rises over it,” she explains with a roll of her eyes even as she realizes how pointless it is to have this conversation with a drunk man. And not just any drunk man, but _this_ particular drunk idiot. “Why’d you even watch it, anyway? I thought you said they’re a waste of time – mine, yours, and everyone’s,” she spits, throwing his words back at him four years too late.

Kylo gives her a silly, lopsided grin. “They _are_ ,” he says brightly, as if he isn’t insulting her documentaries to her goddamn face. “S’a good way to waste time when I’ve got five minutes before I go on and I miss you and I wanna hear your voice.”

Ice sneaks into Rey’s veins, causing all of her muscles to tense. Is he seriously– _now?_ After all this time? After everything he did? _Really?_

“I… I don’t have the time for this,” Rey mutters to herself and makes to cross the street. Trust _Kylo Ren_ to show up and present himself as an even more uncomfortable alternative to celebrating her friends’ engagement in the very restaurant where she’d once planned to celebrate her own.

“Rey, wait–” he calls after her, suddenly sounding more alert than before, and she’s not going to turn back, she’s not she’s not she’s _not_ , but then there’s an awful racket and a trash can clatters to the ground and a pained cry rings throughout the street.

“Oh my god, Ben!”

She runs to his side without consciously deciding to do so, drops down to her knees and pulls him into his lap before she can process what it’ll be like to hold him again after all this time.

“What the hell did you _do_ , you drunken idiot?” Rey demands, sweeping hair out of his face to find a bright red gash on his cheek. There are scrapes on his hands too, little cuts on his palms and scratches on both his arms all the way up to his short sleeves, and a quick glance at the overturned trash can finds shards of broken beer bottles _everywhere_ , the biggest one even slightly bloodied by the cut on his cheek.

“Fell,” he manages to force out through gritted teeth as Rey’s hand hovers uselessly above his wound. “No surprise there, right?” the idiot _laughs,_ only to hiss as the movement of his face aggravates the pain. “Always falling for you. Right from the beginning, remember when you walked into Poe’s house and I tripped over my own fucking feet like a complete loser–”

“Oh my god, _will you shut the fuck up?_ ” Rey commands him with a voice that’s thicker than she’d like. She swallows the lump in her throat, uses her free hand to reach for her phone. Thank _god_ for dresses with pockets.

Rose picks up on the fourth ring. “Hey, can you come out here for a bit? Discreetly, please, I don’t want the guys to worry.”

“Snap’s in the middle of a speech, I’ll try to sneak out as soon as I can,” Rose whispers back before she hangs up and leaves Rey to deal with a lapful of _idiot_ on her own for the next few minutes.

“Close your eyes, I need to see how bad it is,” she barks harshly, turning on her flashlight without waiting to see if he’ll comply.

“Ah, fuck,” Kylo grumbles when she shines the light in his eyes, rushing to obey her order. She focuses on the cut, but when Rey starts tracing it with her eyes from one end on his jaw to the other right beneath his eye, she finds herself catching sight of the worst dark circles she’s ever seen.

From there it only gets worse: he’s so pale his skin is practically translucent, his lips are chapped and bleeding, and if she were to look up the word _gaunt_ right now she’d probably find a picture of Kylo Ren in the dictionary. And that’s just his _face_ , Rey realizes with a sinking feeling in her stomach as one hand reaches down to wrap around his bicep.

She hadn’t noticed it from afar, not in the darkness and with him in his leather jacket, but he’s so much skinnier than she remembers him being, so much _weaker_.

“Ben,” she breathes, and her voice is thick with tears again. “Ben, what _happened_ to you?”

Had he really fallen in his haste to follow after her? Or had he just collapsed, a result of whatever this is rather than the alcohol in his system? And he doesn’t even smell heavily enough of alcohol for him to be this far gone; Rey lived with this man for years, knows that it takes a small distillery for him to get anywhere near _tipsy_. None of this is adding up.

“How long can you spare?” the smartass mumbles, still squeezing his eyes shut. “Because the answer is _a lot_.”

She’s missed that, Rey realizes with a pang. His awful sense of humor, his deadpan delivery, _him_.

“Give me an itemized list,” she manages to croak out, tucking her phone back into her pocket.

Kylo opens his eyes, looks up at her and makes no move to shift from her lap. “Haven’t eaten in days, haven’t slept properly in months, started drinking to forget and now I have to _keep_ drinking to _keep_ forgetting, didn’t really think that one through–”

“But _why_?”

He blinks at her, a slow, confused movement of his eyelids. “Because I’m a rock star. S’what rock stars do.”

 _This is what rock stars do, Rey. We go on huge tours and we’re always on the road and_ yes _, if a groupie asks me to sign her tits after paying hundreds of dollars for our shit then I’m gonna fucking sign her tits and smile at her while I do it–_

“You’re a fucking _idiot_ ,” Rey says, choking on a sob as she does. She’s done here. Rose will be out any minute now, and then they’ll call an Uber or something to drive him to the hospital and get him fixed up. He’s a big boy, he’s a _rock star_ , he can handle himself while she goes back to the party and pretends none of this ever happened–

“Yeah, I know,” he whispers, and before she knows it he’s raised one hand to brush away tears she hadn’t even realized she’s crying. “But it’s too late to change that, isn’t it?”

 _You have the saddest eyes in the world_ , Rey had once told him, laughingly at the time. Now he pins her in place with those sad eyes and something in her breaks and against all common sense Rey leans down to press her lips to his forehead.

“Not too late, it’s never too late,” she assures him in a fevered whisper. “You’re doing to yourself what I watch people do to the planet every day, Ben, but if there’s still hope for earth then there’s still hope for you.”

 _Do you really think any of this is going to make a difference? Grow the fuck up, Rey. You’re throwing away your future to save the fucking trees?_ Everyone _wants to work with you, fucking_ Luke Skywalker _is willing to come out of retirement for you, and you’re choosing to go film oily birds and stuck turtles and whatever the fuck on your own dime instead? You’re choosing to_ leave me _for some hopeless crusade that’s never going to amount to anything?_

Ben looks up at her with those sad, sad eyes.

“You really think so?”

“I know so,” she tells him as noise spills out of the Cantina from the open door and the click of Rose’s heels grows closer. “You just need to choose, Ben. Choose to walk away from this. Choose to change your life. Please, _please,_ I don’t want to see you like this anymore–”

He reaches for her hand, laces their fingers together. “I can’t do it alone, Rey.”

Rey squeezes his hand, gives him a smile. “You’re not alone.”

She holds his hand the whole way to the hospital, and never leaves his side again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is two thousand words long and completely off-topic. Moral of the story, kids: always come up with an outline, even when you _think_ it's just going to be a short ficlet.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it! Please don't hesitate to leave a comment; I'm on a mission to write seven more ficlets today and feedback will help fuel my mad man's quest.


	19. Orenda

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **DAY NINETEEN: ORENDA**  
>  (n.) a mystical force present in all people that empowers them to affect the world, or to effect change in their own lives  
> Here’s an unprompted canon-compliant post-TLJ ficlet for castle-and-crowns. I’ve been wanting to write you a little something as a sign of my appreciation for all your support and encouragement, and when I saw [your tags on @bensolodefensesquad‘s post](https://castle-and-crowns.tumblr.com/post/181409037033/callback-i-want-in-epix) I knew I had to go for it.

“Get up.”

He would, he _should_ , but everything hurts and for once, that’s not a good thing. Where once his pain had fueled his delusions of invincibility, now it serves only as a reminder of his mortality, of how frail and weak and hopeless he truly is without the Dark side.

“Get _up_ , damn it!”

Rey looms over him, the twin glows of her ice-blue saberstaff bathing her in light. She’s breathing hard, though whether from exertion or frustration he cannot tell; another way that the Force has well and truly abandoned him, leaving him to drift aimlessly through this galaxy without the call of Light or Dark, without the anchoring presence of the Bond.

“Get up and _fight me_!” Rey demands, her voice both a shriek and a sob somehow. Tears stream down her face, yet her eyes burn with rage; he’ll never truly understand her, never did even when their minds were practically one. Now, now when the space where she used to be is just another dark spot of missed possibilities and crushing regret… he doesn’t stand a chance where Rey is concerned, not at understanding her, not at beating her, not at winning her.

Kylo thumbs off his crackling saber, lets it go and watches it roll away on the uneven ground even as he remains on his knees. “For what, Rey?” he croaks, parched from hours of cat-and-mouse and days of neglecting his needs. “What is left to fight for?”

“What are you–” Rey furrows her brows at him warily, breaks apart her staff and holds both ends over him as if this is some ploy of his, as if he has any energy or effort or desire left to change the tides of this battle.

As if he has any reason to survive this battle.

“My throne has been taken from me, my knights have turned on me, and my whole family is dead, Rey. Dead, because of me,” he finally admits out loud for the first time since his mother’s death, giving voice to the thing that’s been sitting in his throat and on his chest ever since she died and took everything with her. The day Leia Organa passed, she took not only herself but a part of her son, and he’s only lost more and more since. “I have _nothing_ ,” Kylo Ren realizes in that instance, and somehow everything is so much easier, so much clearer now that he’s accepted that, now that he can stop trying so hard.

“There’s nothing left to fight for,” he tells Rey, who’s lowered her sabers now as more tears silently roll down her cheeks. “There’s nothing left to live for,” Kylo decides, embracing that knowledge and the peace it brings him, the strength it gives him to say–

“Just do it, Rey.” He takes one last look at her, refreshes his memories of her eyes and her lips and her freckles. One last smile would’ve been nice, but he won’t ask that of her. Instead, Kylo closes his eyes with a sigh and dips his head, baring the back of his neck to her. “Just end it, please. I know I don’t deserve your mercy after everything but… please, Rey. This is what the Force wants.”

Not that it’s told him so, not that it’s told him anything since the day he woke up and everything was gone somehow, the sinister whispers of the Dark and the desperate pleas of the Light and the soothing presence of Rey taken, _stolen_ from him and hidden someplace he’ll never be able to find.

But that’s a message in and of itself, isn’t it?

The hum of Rey’s saber seems especially loud to him now, in these final moments when it might be the last thing he’ll ever hear. At least it’s so much more soothing than the unstable crackle of his own, the last awful sound so many people heard before he ended their lives. Kylo keeps his eyes closed and his head down, prays Rey will at least grace him with her voice one last time before she completes the deed and finally brings balance back to the Force–

“No,” Rey says through gritted teeth, and suddenly the soothing hum disappears, leaving only the sounds of his pounding heart and her heavy breathing to echo in his ears.

“This is not what the Force wants,” she declares firmly, and he opens his eyes when something falls to the ground only to find her on her knees in front of him, her extinguished saber a few feet away. “It’s what the First Order wants, and it’s what the Resistance wants, and it’s what your guilt wants, but your death is _not_ what the Force wants, Ben Solo.”

The sound of that name on her lips is the only thing that’s truly hurt him since his mother’s death, that’s actually made him feel _anything_ in weeks. He wants to tell her that he doesn’t deserve it anymore, just as he doesn’t deserve these spare moments she’s giving him, but Rey isn’t done just yet.

“Close your eyes,” she demands. “Close your eyes and tell me what the Force really wants, Ben.”

There it is again, and it almost hurts as much as having to tell her– “I can’t,” Kylo admits, closing his eyes out of shame rather than compliance. “I can’t feel the Force anymore,” he confesses in a whisper.

A warm hand slips into his, gives him a squeeze. “I’ll help you,” Rey says so gently, so painfully gently, and he can’t bear to tell her that that’s not how it works but he has to, she has to know that–

Rey leans forward, balances herself with one hand on his thigh as she presses her forehead to his, and suddenly for the first time in nearly a week it all comes flooding back: every life-form on this planet, every signature in the galaxy, the voices of Light and Dark forever speaking over each other like a discordant duet, Rey _Rey **Rey**_ –

And between it all, the Force.

Always moving and breathing and pulsing, always ebbing and flowing, pushing and pulling, and in between all of that movement it stops just long enough to show him–

Balance.

Atonement.

 _Change_.

His eyes fly open to find Rey watching him with a small smile.

“Now do you see?” she asks quietly, still holding his hand.

Kylo blinks away his vision, but the Force remains in the back of his mind, a soothing presence almost as welcome as Rey’s rather than the intrusive, demanding voices of Dark and Light.

“Yes,” he admits quietly, reluctantly. “Yes but… but I can’t, Rey, I can’t do it alone, I have nothing left–”

“You have _me_ ,” Rey says, eyes blazing with determination, and it’s only then that he realizes that her hand is still on his thigh – a warm, welcome weight even as her nails dig into his skin when she moves in closer, rests all her weight on that one hand as she draws herself up so that she’s so close he nearly goes cross-eyed trying to look at her. “You have me, Ben. You’re not alone,” she whispers, and something flashes in her eyes then, a familiar, heart-wrenching vulnerability that has him speaking without thought.

“Neither are you,” he echoes those sacred words from so long ago, from a moment that felt heavy with promise and possibility and something new–

– a moment much like this one, Kylo realizes as Rey surges forward almost desperately, _violently_ , and then suddenly she’s kissing him and breathing life back into him and whispering without words, without breaking their kiss.

 _I’ll be there with you,_ Rey promises, her voice in his mind like birdsong heralding a new dawn after the longest night of the year. _Every step of the way, Ben._

And with her by his side, he knows that this time things will be different.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a little over thirteen hundred words, but I'm semi-okay with how it turned out. Now just six more left to go! (Hopefully they'll actually stay ficlets instead of ballooning into mini one-shots!)
> 
> As always, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it! Please don't hesitate to leave a comment below!


	20. Nefelibata

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **DAY TWENTY: NEFELIBATA**  
>  (n.) lit. “cloud-walker”; one who lives in the clouds of their own imagination or dreams, or one who does not obey the conventions of society, literature, or art  
> For @scoutchick104, who asked for a sequel to Day 14′s modern AU Waffle House ficlet where Ben and Rey “don’t have to dream anymore because what they’ve found together is so much more that they ever could have imagined! Maybe even a moment of panic when one or the other thinks they’re still in a dream world?”

Ben wakes with a start, an almost violent jerk of his limbs that threatens to catch Rey’s attention.

Thankfully they’re in the middle of a heat wave, with nights so hot that she’s taken to sleeping as far from him as possible in their queen bed. He rolls over on his side, drinks in the sight of Rey curled around her pillow with a barely-there smile playing on her lips while his breathing slows down to normal. She must be having a good dream then, nothing like the nightmare that’s cut his rest short; at least one of them will be well-rested enough to make the rest of the drive tomorrow.

He watches her a little while longer, reaches out and sweeps a loose lock of hair back from her face before he carefully makes his way out of bed. Lingering bits of his dream follow Ben as he makes his way to the kitchenette on the opposite end of their home, images of his small, suffocating hometown dancing behind his eyelids even as he tries to blink them away.

The total and complete lack of walls means that he can’t put on a pot of tea or turn on the lights without waking Rey, so he settles for a beer from the fridge and a sliver of moonlight pouring in through the kitchen window instead.

It’s not like the dream was completely unexpected, not with their next destination so close that it feels like a ball of dread has taken up permanent residence in his stomach. He’d known that setting a course for Hanna City was bound to stir up some old ghosts, but what Ben hadn’t prepared himself for was the onslaught of nightmares in which he wastes his entire life in his hometown and dies without ever meeting Rey.

It definitely doesn’t help that even after three years together, everything about their life still feels more like a dream than reality. He’s been walking around in a haze of disbelief ever since they first drove away from Waffle House all those years ago, and things have only gone from ‘too good to be true’ to ‘ _way_ too good to be true’ since then.

Ben closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and tries to list out his reality the way Rey always tells him to. One, he has a beautiful, perfect, _amazing_ fiancée who loves him as much as he loves her and isn’t going anywhere. Two, they share a home together, a home that is constantly moving with them rather than tying them down the way neither of them are ready for. Three, life is _good_.

Too good, even, _and therein lies the problem,_ Ben thinks to himself, a thought that’s quickly chased away by the memory of Rey laughing and shaking her head at him, _baby that’s the exact_ opposite _of a problem–_

She’s taken to it so easily, their odd little life together, and would rather spend all her energy on planning their next great trip instead of questioning their luck. Ben, on the other hand, spends his days marveling at this life he couldn’t have imagined even in his wildest dreams and his nights fearing that it’s all just a dream and one day he’ll wake up in his tiny bed in his tiny house in his tiny town, fourteen and trapped and alone with no hope of escape or freedom or more–

“Couldn’t sleep?” Rey asks as she drapes her arms around his neck from behind and rests her chin on the top of his head.

Ben places his hands over hers, brings one to his lips to press a kiss to her inner wrist. “Just that stupid dream again,” he admits with a sigh as Rey takes the seat opposite him. She slides her hands across their small breakfast table and laces their fingers together, gives him a comforting squeeze.

“We don’t have to go if you’re not ready,” she reminds him, the third time in as many days. And he knows, he _knows_ they could be five minutes away from his parents’ house and Rey would still turn them around and call the whole thing off if he asked her to, but that’s exactly why he can’t, why he won’t.

He shakes his head. “I want you to meet them. I want them to meet _you_ and see for themselves how happy we are together.”

Rey’s not the part he’ll have to convince his parents on; they’ve loved her even since he called home for the first time in years and mumbled that he was only calling because his girlfriend had instilled a newfound appreciation for family in him. It’s everything else about their life that has his parents worried.

 _A mobile home?_ his father had questioned gruffly when Rey and Ben announced the upgrade from long-term motel stays to a tiny home, his father who should’ve understood better than anyone else. _So like… an RV?_

 _How long can a road trip possibly_ be? his mother had demanded tiredly, and the call had ended with her usual suggestion for them to put down some roots and finally start their life together _properly_.

It’s been two years since then, and his parents still haven’t quite wrapped their minds around the fact that this _is_ a proper life as far as Rey and Ben are concerned, two people who’d been trapped for so long that anything less than the complete freedom their current lifestyle affords them feels wrong.

Rey leans forward in her seat to meet him for a kiss in the middle. “They will, Ben. They’ll see how happy we are, and they’ll be happy for us too,” she assures him as they part and sink back into their respective chairs.

“I really, _really_ hope you’re right,” Ben sighs as the first signs of daybreak begin to spill into their home. They’d been an hour away from sunrise when he first woke, and now here they are with streaks of orange and pink bathing Rey in an iridescent light.

“Of course I am,” she declares confidently as she gets up and swipes his beer, downs the last of it before she throws it into the recycle bin right next to her. “Now get up and get ready, I’d like to stop for breakfast before the last leg.”

Ben lets her pull him out of his seat. “Anywhere in particular?” he asks as Rey leads him to the bathroom. The shower is far too tiny for the both of them – his only real issue with the house, as it happens to be – but they’ve developed a habit of talking while one of them showers and the other tends to their morning routine.

Rey pulls off her oversized tee and heads for the shower. “Well, it just so happens that Takodana is on the way,” she informs him. “I was thinking… for old times’ sake?”

Her tone is tentative, questioning, as if there’s any reason for him to say no. They haven’t been back to the tiny highway town where they met since they first left it, and maybe a quick trip down memory lane will give him the strength he needs to survive the rest of the day.

“So Waffle House?” Ben suggests knowingly as Rey steps into the shower.

She smiles at him just as she did the night they first met, and after all these years his heart still skips a beat.

“Waffle House,” Rey agrees with a nod, her voice filled with the same certainty that tells him everything is going to be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy belated new year!
> 
> I can’t believe this is the first thing I’m posting in 2019. Turns out all it takes is a week for me to fall out of practice and write something like this awkward little thing with no beginning and no end. But still, I hope y’all enjoyed this flash-forward to what’s in store for our favorite waffle lovers.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading and please don’t hesitate to leave a comment!


	21. Sehnsucht

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **DAY TWENTY-ONE: SEHNSUCHT**  
>  (n.) “the inconsolable longing in the human heart for we know not what”; a yearning for a far, familiar, non-earthly land one can identify as one’s home  
> For parkerlee, who requested a modern AU where Rey and Ben meet at work, with love at first sight and mutual pining because that’s the good stuff, y’all.

> _[11/22/18, 09:18 AM]_  
>  **To:** [rey_niima@skywalker.com](mailto:rey_niima@skywalker.com)  
>  **From:**[ben_solo@cloudcity.com](mailto:ben_solo@cloudcity.com)  
>  **Subject: Re: Finalizing**
> 
> Yeah, I can’t believe we’re actually done.
> 
> Flying in next Tuesday for the final meeting. Looks like we might finally get to meet in person after all. Can’t wait to see you, Rey.
> 
> \- Ben

The thing is, Tuesday at the final pre-merger meeting won’t be the first time they meet in person.

Not for Rey, anyway.

The first time she ever met Ben Solo was at the press conference announcing the merger six months ago, a whole month before they were both designated their companies’ respective merger liaisons and assigned to work with each other. He was up in the front, at the long table along with Luke and Lando and all the other stakeholders, while she and Finn had their backs plastered to the wall at the very end of the packed room, a whole ocean of press and cameras between them.

Even still, Ben Solo had been impossible to miss. Taller than anyone else in the room, he’d drawn her eye the second he emerged from the side entrance and took his seat next to Lando. The way his eyes scanned his surroundings while everyone else spoke, the way his quiet yet sure voice filled the room whenever he was called upon, the little smile he’d flashed the cameras when Poe cracked a joke during the group photo… every single detail about Ben Solo from that day has stuck with Rey ever since, made all the more vivid by the fact that she’s gotten well acquainted with those eyes and that voice and even occasionally that smile thanks to the last few months of video conferences and late-night calls.

And now…. now she gets to experience all of it in person again. Of course some part of her had known that Ben and the rest of the Cloud City team would eventually relocate, that in the near future he might very well be a part of her everyday life. But knowing that two companies are about to merge and processing the fact that the man you’re half in love with will soon be just five minutes away are two very, very different things, and Rey is only now figuring that out.

* * *

> _[11/26/18, 07:32 PM]_  
>  **To:**[ben_solo@cloudcity.com](mailto:ben_solo@cloudcity.com)  
>  **From:**[rey_niima@skywalker.com](mailto:rey_niima@skywalker.com)  
>  **Subject: Re: Finalizing**
> 
> Just leaving the office. Everything’s ready for tomorrow morning! It’s been fun working with you on this, but I honestly can’t wait for this merger to be over and done with so that we can all go back to normal. Whatever _normal_ ends up looking like once the country’s two biggest tech companies become one, that is.
> 
> Have a safe flight. I’ll see you soon, Ben.
> 
> \- Rey

_Soon_ can’t come quickly enough. If it were up to Ben, he would’ve flown out Monday afternoon and arrived just in time to ask Rey to dinner after work. Thanks to Lando, though, they don’t end up leaving for the airport until five, and when they do get there it’s only to be told that there’s a two-hour delay.

By the time they arrive in Yavin, it’s nearly midnight. He debates writing to Rey throughout the ride to the hotel, but if the past few months have taught him anything about her, it’s that she’s as much of a night owl as he is. Not to mention breathtakingly radiant and smart and funny and–

Is it possible to be in love with someone you’ve never met? Rey, at least, has the advantage of having seen him in person way back in May, albeit from across a crowded room. But Ben has never seen her outside of a screen, and for the umpteenth time he curses himself for leaving in a rush that day rather than sticking around for the post-conference mixer where he would have been introduced to her.

Instead, the very first time he laid eyes on her was during a video conference, when she was just one of the dozen people whose names and positions his uncle had spouted off before calling the meeting to order. Even then, though, squished between Luke and Poe and dressed in a non-descript black shift dress, Rey had been the most interesting person in the room, and he’d found his eyes drawn to her again and again. Sometimes Ben wonders if maybe his meddling uncles had noticed that, if that’s why Luke and Lando had partnered them up shortly after.

Even if that’s the case, Ben can’t bring himself to be mad at them. Hell, he’ll let them gloat about it as much as they want if it actually leads to anything.

If Rey actually lets him into her life.

* * *

> **Ben (00:12):**  
>  Just landed. Heading to hotel now.  
>  I’ll see you in the morning.  
>  Sleep well, Rey.

She doesn’t see his message until the next morning, when she wakes up at six in order to get to the office extra early and make sure everything’s ready for the meeting. It’s really more of a formality at this point, just some signatures on a dotted line to cap off months and months of negotiations, but Rey still feels the need to check that everything’s perfect. Even now, four years since she first started working for Skywalker Tech, there’s a constant need to prove herself, to keep earning her place. _Maybe,_ she’d mused to Ben once, when their late-night call about merging HR protocols turned personal, _deep down I still can’t believe that I finally belong somewhere and I keep thinking that I’m going to fuck it all up and then it’ll be gone, just like that._ A pause, and then– _Wow, I should_ really _go to sleep._

Ben had laughed then, a rich, raspy sound that made her toes curl. _A little bit of psychoanalysis never hurt anyone,_ he’d said, and in her mind Rey pictured him smiling at her, shrugging those broad shoulders of his, maybe even leaning in to brush messy strands of hair away from her face.

And out of nowhere, a wave of homesickness unlike any she’d ever known before had hit her right in the gut, a particular brand of longing that would take her months to recognize as _pining_.

So now here she sits, the first to arrive at a meeting where she’ll be seated next to the man she’s been pining after for the past six months. It’s eighty-thirty, half an hour before the meeting is scheduled to start, and Rey has gone through the contract in front of her at least four times this morning alone. She’s about to pick it up for a fifth time when the door opens, and–

“ _Ben_.”

* * *

> **Rey (06:04):**  
>  Sorry, just saw this  
>  Had an early night to get ready for this ridiculously early morning  
>  Anyway, off to the office now  
>  Would you maybe wanna get lunch after the meeting?

He’s supposed to leave with the rest of the team at eight-thirty, but the second Ben wakes up to find Rey’s text, he knows there’s no way he’s going to be able to concentrate on the meeting unless he talks to her first.

He skips the gym, showers and gets dressed in thirty minutes, and orders an Uber a little after eight. It’s a twenty-minute ride, thirty with light traffic, and Ben spends all twenty-three minutes scrolling up and down his chat with Rey to figure out whether she’s asking him to lunch as colleagues or friends or…

By the time they pull up to his uncle’s company, Ben still hasn’t figured it out – par for the course when it comes to his relationship with Rey, really. She’s been a mystery since day one, this stranger who sets him at ease with just one smile, this voice coming from tinny speakers that somehow soothes him more than anything else in the world. Ben has gone all his life looking for a place where he can finally find peace, spent years exploring countryside mansions and remote mountains and exotic islands, but _of course_ he would find home in a pair of hazel eyes and a lilting accent and a soul that feels like the missing part of his.

If his uncles could hear him now, would they regret unleashing someone like him on poor, unsuspecting Rey who probably just thinks of him as a work friend? Or would they just fist-bump each other and ask to give a toast at the wedding?

Ben grimaces at the thought, makes a conscious effort to rein himself in as he steps onto the elevator. Lunch first – whether or not it’s a date – and then he’ll _maybe_ consider everything else. The elevator ride is quicker than expected, and within minutes he’s standing outside the conference room, watching Rey through the glass walls.

She has her back to him, but he can see that she has her hair down in waves and she’s wearing a cream-colored dress and he can just picture the look of concentration on her face as she goes through the contract, the familiar sight of a slight furrow between her brows and her lower lip trapped between her teeth emblazoned in his mind after months of working together.

Precious minutes tick by while Ben tries to compose himself and gather his nerve to walk in. When Rey reaches for the discarded contract yet again, he knows it’s time.

“ _Ben_ ,” she breathes before the door has even closed behind him, before he’s even had a chance to meet her eye, and then she’s throwing the contract aside, pushing her chair back and standing up and–

“Rey,” he murmurs, crosses the room and falters with only inches between them. Rey hesitantly raises her arms and he haltingly stumbles closer and then suddenly they’re hugging and somehow, impossibly, it’s not awkward at all.

His arms wrap around her waist and hers circle his neck and when she laughs, a puff of warm air dances across the exposed skin of his neck. “Hi,” Rey breathes with a slight giggle, dazed and in disbelief. Her lips barely move against his skin but he shudders anyway, pulls her closer and squeezes her hips.

“Hi,” Ben echoes, lips brushing against her temple. She sighs and rests her head on his shoulder, and if it weren’t for the meeting he’d be happy to stay like this forever but–

“I got your text,” he tells Rey, still holding her tight. She doesn’t say anything, just tenses the slightest bit in his arms.

Ben pulls back, and she reluctantly loosens her hold on him so that they’re looking at each other now, and he shouldn’t feel this comfortable around someone he’s only just met, shouldn’t feel at home with a stranger, but he _does_ and so the words escape him without thought.

“Rey… did you ask me out?”

She stares at him for the longest time, and with each second that passes by without a denial comes the ever-increasing urge to smile until he’s grinning at her like a fool and she’s beaming at him like the sun and–

“I suppose I did,” Rey laughs, her hands still twined behind his neck and his arms still slung around her middle, and Ben’s pretty sure he had a dream like this once, a dream where they were holding each other and dancing and smiling while all their loved ones watched. “Is that… is that okay?” she asks, her smile dimming.

“It’s more than okay,” Ben hurries to assure her, to put that smile back on her face. “It’s perfect. You’re perfect. God, I can’t believe–”

“That you’re finally here?” she interrupts, slides her fingers into the curls at the base of his neck. “Yeah, me neither.”

 _That you feel the same way,_ he’d meant to say. _That I could be so lucky. That home is you in my arms._

But they’ve got time for all that and more, now. They’ve got time for lunch dates and long walks and all the things he could never tell her over the phone back when he still didn’t know how right she would feel in his arms.

So instead, Ben pulls her back in and rests his cheek on her head. “I’m here now, sweetheart. I’m here to stay.”

“Good,” Rey murmurs, lips grazing the side of his neck. “Because now that I’ve finally found you...”

She doesn’t say it yet, just as he doesn’t. But they both trade an unspoken promise they’ll give voice to soon enough.

_Now that I’ve finally found you…_

_… I’m never letting go._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The constant switch in POVs kinda bugs me, but other than that I’m... actually okay with this, even though it didn’t turn out anything like the fic I set out to write _and_ it somehow ended up being more than two thousand words. I hope you enjoyed it as well, and thanks for reading!
> 
> As always, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment!


	22. Ostranenie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **DAY TWENTY-TWO: OSTRANENIE**  
>  (n.) encouraging people to see common things as strange, wild, or unfamiliar; defamiliarizing what is known in order to know it differently or more deeply  
> For the anon who requested jealous Kylo/Ben in any setting: here’s a canon-verse post-defection Ben getting jealous over... a lot of things, really.

A week after Ben defects to the Resistance, Rey leaves him to dine in private with his mother and joins her friends for dinner for the first time since the unexpected turn of events.

It’s a quiet, awkward affair thanks to the widespread rumor that Ben gave up the galaxy for her, made all the more awkward when Rey pushes aside her half-empty plate and clears her throat.

“I know that this is… odd, for everyone,” she acknowledges, eyes flitting from Rose to Finn to Poe to Kaydel. “But the general and I would be really grateful if…”

Rey falters, drops her eyes to the table. “If…”

Under the table, Rose reaches out to give her hand a reassuring squeeze, and when Rey looks up she finds an encouraging smile on her friend’s face. “If?” Rose prompts.

“If you guys would let Ben sit with us tomorrow,” Rey says in a single breath, nearly tripping over her own words. In the silence that follows, the nervous flutter of her heart seems almost deafening to her ringing ears. She resists the urge to close her eyes, to walk away, to hide forever–

“I mean,” Poe begins contemplatively, twisting the fork in his hand. “The man _did_ try to kill us, but he’s also singlehandedly turned the tide of this war.”

“I guess everyone’s capable of change,” Finn adds reluctantly, after a rather obvious jab to his side courtesy of Rose.

All eyes turn to Kaydel, who’s been calmly picking at her meal throughout. “If it makes the general happy,” she shrugs without looking up from her food.

And so the next morning they drag an empty chair over to their table, leave it next to Rey, and wait for the former Supreme Leader to join them for breakfast.

Rey catches sight of him hovering by the entrance while everyone else is busy discussing the day ahead, raises a hand to beckon him over–

His eyes land somewhere to her right, fixed on a seemingly random point between her and Finn, and the next thing she knows he’s scowling and turning and leaving.

The Bond is blocked that day, like a pipe clogged up by something she can’t quite identify.

* * *

A month after Ben’s arrival, the Resistance plans a celebration.

It’s nothing grand, barely a feast according to those who remember what that was like, but it’s the first celebration of any kind that Rey will ever experience, and somehow word of that reaches Leia.

Poe finds her two hours before the party and marches her over to the general’s quarters, and the next thing Rey knows she’s sitting on the ground while Leia runs soothing hands through her hair and slowly fashions it into an intricate braid befitting the occasion.

“Are braids… important to you?” Rey asks haltingly, staying as still as she can. “You don’t have to answer, it’s just that, well, you’re always wearing them, and I’ve noticed that they change, sometimes, when things happen, and Kaydel said something about your home planet once–”

“Alderaan,” Leia says quietly, hands stilling for a moment. Rey winces to herself, realizing belatedly that maybe she shouldn’t have brought up the lost planet and all the grief that comes with it on such a happy day. But when Leia speaks again, her voice is wistful instead of sad, with an airy, faraway quality to it rather than the weight of sorrow.

Leia keeps weaving. “Braids are a language all on their own, to my people. We lost a lot when our planet was taken from us, but this… this we kept. If I had a daughter, I would’ve taught her all about it the way my mother taught me, the way her mother taught her.” She laughs then, a rare, beautiful occurrence that’s increased in frequency ever since her son’s return. “I had Ben instead, but he made a perfect student nonetheless, always climbing up on tables and chairs to reach my hair and practice.”

Rey nearly, _nearly_ turns around and ruins all of Leia’s hard work. “Ben can braid?” she asks, smiling at the thought.

“Oh yes, I taught him nearly everything–”

The door connecting Leia’s quarters to Ben’s opens, and the man himself appears with a frown on his face and a datapad in his hands.

“Mom, I’d really rather not–”

He looks up from his datapad, pauses as he takes in the sight of Leia on the edge of her bed and Rey on the floor next to her, a half-formed Alderaanian braid between them, and all Rey can think about is Ben in place of Leia, running those large hands of his through her hair, being so, so gentle with her as he honors his mother’s tradition–

She’s forcibly yanked out of her daydream when a spike of _something_ ripples through the Bond, an indecipherable mess of a dozen emotions tangled together.

“I’ll come back later,” Ben says, and shuts the door behind him.

Leia sighs heavily and goes back to work without a single word.

* * *

Six weeks after he first arrived, the leadership grants Ben permission to leave the compound and train with Rey.

She guides him through the forest with their hands intertwined and leads him to her favorite spot, a little secret she’s kept to herself all this while and can’t wait to share with him.

Ben’s smile is as wide as her own when they finally reach her meditation spot, her excitement leaking through the Bond and seeping into his receptive mind.

“I think this is my favorite place in the galaxy,” Rey admits quietly as she tugs at his hand and urges him to sit down on the large, smooth stone she added the day he arrived, a darker twin to the one she’s been sitting on ever since she stumbled upon this place.

They settle into a peaceful silence, surrendering themselves to their surroundings, to the nexus of the forest. From this spot on the riverbank they can hear the distant crashes of the waterfall and feel the sun as it rises above them, drown out their thoughts and concerns with the sounds of the forest surrounding them, birds calling to each other and tiny critters scampering past and beyond that, below that, life itself, an ancient pulse beneath their feet that sustains the entire continent.

Rey gives herself over to it, syncs her own heartbeat to the heartbeat of the planet, of the Force–

“I _can’t_ ,” Ben growls, his red-hot irritation snapping her back to reality. When she opens her eyes he’s already up on his feet and pacing along the river, and Rey watches as he runs a hand through his hair and yanks at the ends.

“I was never any good at this anyway, the padawan who couldn’t master even the most basic kriffing task like a _failure_ –”

She jumps to her feet then, crosses the distance between them and places a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Hey. No. You are _not_ a failure–”

Ben doesn’t look at her, shrugs her hand off. “Easy for you to say,” he scoffs, and there it is again, that disturbance in the Bond that makes everything seem awful and wrong and–

And suddenly, Rey understands what it is.

“Jealous,” she realizes out loud, and from the corner of her eye she catches Ben as he abruptly stills. “You’re _jealous_ ,” Rey confronts him, nearly laughing in incredulity as he hangs his head, a wordless confession. She pushes a little more, untangles the complex knot to understand– “Of me. _Of me_? Over me, too, but _of_ me, Ben? Why would you possibly–”

The first time he tried to join them for breakfast, Finn had a hand around her chair – around both hers and Rose’s because he’d been laughing so hard just moments before that he needed the support but Ben didn’t know that, Ben didn’t see anything other than Finn’s hand on her chair and Finn’s hand being the first to ever take hers and Finn’s hand reaching for her, always reaching for her and just like that, he made up his mind to take all of his meals far, far away from them.

When he walked in on Leia braiding her hair it felt like a slap in the face because that should’ve been him, that could’ve been him, he’d been itching to touch her for weeks, months even, but instead he’d kept his distance and now his mother was the one partaking in this intimate ritual with Rey, his mother who’d been the one to teach him, his mother who used to share this with him and only him–

“Oh,” Rey whispers to herself while Ben continues to stare at the ground. “ _Oh._ ”

Silence hangs between them, filled with all the things Rey can’t bring herself to say.

Finally, Ben does it for her. “And now… now here you are, effortlessly connecting with the Force while I keep reaching and reaching and _reaching_ for this thing that I’ve had since the second I was born–”

Rey takes his clenched fists in her hands and slowly pries his fingers loose so that she can tangle them with her own. “Ben, that’s not… that’s not how it works.”

“Of course it’s not,” he laughs bitterly, but his hands stay in hers and that’s a start, at least. “I’m supposed to be a Skywalker, Rey. I’m a kriffing _Skywalker_ , and I can’t even meditate right. What is _wrong_ with me?”

 _Everything,_ he blurts out into the Bond.

 _Nothing,_ Rey counters firmly, fiercely as she guides him back to the rock and kneels down next to him.

“Did I ever tell you about the first lesson Luke taught me?” she asks, treading lightly on thin ice.

Ben tenses at the mention of his uncle, but otherwise shows no signs of reacting to it. So Rey leans in, presses her forehead to his to feed him a memory from a lifetime ago – Luke’s leading question, the blade of grass, her revelation.

She stops there; he’s seen the rest before, witnessed her question herself for succumbing so easily to the call of the Darkness.

“Now do you understand?” Rey whispers, eyes still closed as she wills him to see what Luke showed her all those months ago. “You don’t _have_ the Force, Ben. None of us do. It’s not something for you to control; it’s something for you to _connect_ with.”

Rey falls back on her haunches, waits for Ben to open his eyes and _see_ , for him to understand that there’s nothing to be jealous of. The thing with Finn and his mother and her, they can work through that later. But this, the Force, the one thing he’s always been able to rely on… this she has to show him.

He stays quiet for a while, and Rey gives him the time and space he needs, backs away from the Bond to let him work through his thoughts in private, to let him rip everything he’s ever known into shreds and piece it together again.

That heavy, ugly knot of jealousy is the last thing to go, but when it does Rey feels it in her soul, snaps her eyes up to find Ben already looking at her, waiting for her.

“Will…” He slides down from the rock, kneels on the ground with her and holds out his hand. “Will you teach me?”

She smiles, laces their fingers together and leans in for a quick kiss. “We’ll learn together,” Rey promises him, and so they do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Damn, this got out of hand. So much so that at some point I actually walked away from this and tried to write a shorter version based only on the braiding scene, but then that one got too long as well so... It’s official: I’m hopeless, you guys. Both at keeping ficlets ficlet-length and writing jealousy. Sorry, anon! I really did try, I promise.
> 
> As always, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it. Please don’t hesitate to leave a comment!


	23. Acatalepsy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **DAY TWENTY-THREE: ACATALEPSY**  
>  (n.) the impossibility of comprehending the universe; the belief that human knowledge can never have true certainty  
> Here’s a modern AU paranormal investigators piece for anyone who might’ve been (or still is) a _The Black Tapes Podcast_ fan, because it'll always hold a special place in my heart.

> **THE RADDUS PODCAST NETWORK IS PROUD TO PRESENT:  
>  ** **A TALE ABOUT GHOSTS, LOSS, AND ALL THE OTHER THINGS THAT HAUNT US.**

_A long, long time ago, in a desert wasteland far away, a young orphan stumbled upon a set of case files chronicling the world’s most intriguing paranormal phenomena. Even more intriguing was the fact that they were all signed by one Sir Benjamin Kenobi, the celebrated historian who mysteriously disappeared from the public eye in his later years and was never heard from again._

Twelve years have passed, and that young orphan is now RPN’s very own Rey Durand. Join one of the nation’s most promising investigative journalists as she partners up with noted paranormal skeptic Dr. Kylo Ren to get to the bottom of **THE KENOBI FILES**.

> **S02E11: The Mother**

A seemingly typical trip to Naboo takes an unexpected turn when Rey finds out that Dr. Ren is connected to the case in a very personal way.

 **_Genre:_ ** _non-fiction; paranormal; supernatural; true crime; history; romance_

* * *

“Good morning, Dr. Grumpy!” Rey chirps as Kylo folds his tall frame into her tiny car with a grimace. He opens his mouth to let loose a teasing reply, then takes one look at the recorder on her dashboard and reconsiders his words.

“Are you ever going to stop calling me that?” Kylo asks with a sigh for the audience’s benefit as he leans over the console to press a silent kiss to her temple.

“Are you ever going to stop _being_ grumpy?” Rey retorts with a smile that’s far too soft for her tone as she pulls away from the curb of Kylo’s apartment building. They drive in comfortable silence until Rey gets on the highway, at which point she informs him that today’s case file is in the backseat.

“Just fill me in on the basics,” Kylo instructs her without missing a beat, ignoring the file as usual. He hasn’t bothered with them since halfway through their first season, claiming that anything more than just the facts will prevent him from approaching their cases as objectively as possible.

“Well, as I told you yesterday, we’ve got a long drive ahead of us. Four hours, to be precise, because today’s case is all the way in Naboo. Have you ever been?” Rey asks, sparing Kylo a quick glance.

“Once or twice,” he shrugs as Rey motions for him to open the glove box and retrieve a few pages’ worth of printed tweets. The papers crinkle as Kylo smooths them out, muffling his groan of realization. “Rey…”

She flashes him a bright grin. “Oh come on, it’s tradition! Time for another round of _how many tweets can we make Dr. Ren read before he loses it_!” she announces to their listeners. “You ready?”

“I never am,” Kylo mutters, utterly resigned to his fate.

“That’s the spirit. Now go!”

Rey can feel his glare on her, but she keeps her eyes on the road and resolutely ignores him until he starts reading. “@MrsDrRen–” and here Kylo clears his throat uncomfortably, takes a moment before he gets back to it with a hint of wariness in his voice. “@MrsDrRen tweeted: _Look, it’s not like I need a picture of Kylo Ren to know that he’s hot…_ AF?” he asks, turning to Rey questioningly.

“As fuck,” she clarifies, and has to bite back a laugh at the way Kylo ducks his head and rubs at the back of his neck even at the tamest of the bunch. She can’t wait to see him react to the others. “Go on, what else did MrsDrRen write?”

“ _It’s not like I need a picture of Kylo Ren to know that he’s hot AF,_ ” he repeats, _“but I’d appreciate one anyway @ReyDurand @CoruscantU._ How can she even be sure?” Kylo asks with an adorable little furrow between his brows. “All she has to go by is my voice and your generic descriptions.”

“Oh, trust me,” Rey smirks, “the voice is enough. And my descriptions aren’t generic, thank you very much. It’s not my fault that you _actually_ have hair straight out of a Pantene commercial. Next one,” she orders before they can get sidetracked.

“This is from @KenobiFiles _…_ 5Evah?” He waits for a nod from Rey before going on. “@KenobiFiles5Evah tweeted: _Honestly, if Rey wants Kylo to lose it, all she has to do is lean over and suck–_ Oh.”

She can’t help but burst into laughter then, sneaking a glance at her scandalized boyfriend. “How would that even… that is _very_ reckless,” he finally says, scowling at the paper before he balls it up and tosses it into the backseat. “Is this from another one of those people who think that you and I…?” Kylo asks, and his voice carries the exact same hint of confusion and disapproval as always, as if things haven’t completely changed since they first discovered that they’d gained a few shippers along with their viewers. He really is a better actor than anyone gives him credit for, especially her production team.

“Yup!” she says brightly, pretending to be as unaffected by the idea as always. “Okay, last one. If you read this one in its entirety, you win.”

“And what do I get if I win?” As far as their audience can discern, it’s an entirely innocent-sounding question. But the pointed way Kylo slowly drags his eyes up her body makes her wish they didn’t have a four-hour drive followed by a night in a haunted house ahead of them. Maybe she should’ve stayed over last night after all.

Rey shrugs the moment off. “I’ll buy you one of those sugary Starbucks monstrosities you like so much.”

“That’s slander and you know it,” he huffs, but there’s no way their dedicated listeners won’t pick up on the fact that he didn’t reject the offer. Rey can already picture them cooing over the fact that serious, grumpy Kylo Ren has a sugar tooth.

“All right, last one,” Kylo announces with a sigh. “@Carla666 tweeted: _Dr. Ren could shit all over my beliefs and insult me to my face and I’d still ask him to… to…_ ”

“To?” Rey goads, knowing he won’t back down.

“ _To fist me_ ,” he forces out in a strangled whisper _,_ and Rey laughs until there are tears in her eyes and she has to pull over.

* * *

Kylo’s sleeping when they finally arrive in Lake Country, and Rey wishes she could wake him up without the recorder on; he’s always so dazed and sweet after a nap. But she likes to think their show is pretty damn authentic, and that means capturing genuine first reactions whenever she can.

“Dr. Ren,” she whispers, wrapping a hand around his arm. “Dr. Ren, we’re here.”

He’s always been a light sleeper; something to do with a childhood incident, which Rey understands all too well. “Hmm? Where… Oh, we’re…”

She’s in the midst of watching him with a soft smile on her face, a flood of affection washing over her at the way he rubs his eyes, when Kylo suddenly tenses.

“Rey,” he says evenly, turning to her with the kind of blank look he gives her interns when he’s _this close_ to snapping at them. It’s a look she’s never been on the receiving end of, and it’s just as unsettling as the unlucky interns claimed. “Rey, why are we here?”

“Um, the case?” she reminds him with a frown. “I told you it’s in Naboo, remember?”

“You said it’s in Lake Country. This is not Lake Country.”

“Yes, it is,” Rey insists, pointing out the big, fancy sign they drove past just minutes ago, while he was still dozing. “Kylo, what’s wro–”

“I don’t know what the hell they’re calling this area these days, but _that_ –” he points up at the house ahead of them, the one they’re supposed to spend the night in, “is Varykino Manor, and this whole area is Varykino.”

Rey twists around and reaches into the backseat for the file. “Yeah, the house is still called Varykino, but that’s the only original structure left. The rest of it was turned into a luxury development years ago, almost a decade now. Wait,” she comes to a realization as she hands him the file. “You know this place?”

Kylo is silent for a beat, a struggle playing out on his face while she watches.

Finally, he turns to her as he opens the file. “This is my grandmother’s house,” he whispers, and when he turns to the file he squeezes his eyes shut as if he’s in physical pain.

“And that,” he points at the grainy photo attached to the first page, the specter circled in red marker, “is my grandmother.”

* * *

Miraculously, Kylo doesn’t call the investigation off.

“I’m sick and tired of this bullshit,” he growls after recounting the numerous alleged sightings of his grandmother over the years, the hushed rumors and unkind whispers about his family. “I’m going to prove once and for all that my grandmother isn’t a ghost because _ghosts aren’t real_.”

And with that, he slams the car door behind him and hikes up to the house with both their bags.

Rey scrambles to get the recorder and lock the car, and catches up to him in front of the grand, imposing double doors. This place certainly has all the makings of a haunted house, but it’s so beautiful that she can’t bring herself to be scared of it – of any of it, really. The house isn’t abandoned or in disrepair, just rarely inhabited. Locals have reported seeing lights on when they know for a fact no one’s around, but unlike most of their cases, there are no horror stories here, nothing even remotely malicious. There’s just the lights, and then the rare sighting of a woman – Kylo’s grandmother – on the balcony, looking out at the lake as if she’s waiting for something. The handful of eye witnesses who claim to have seen her report that upon making eye contact, she simply gave them a sad smile as she faded away, leaving them shaken by melancholy more than fear.

“Keys?”

“Oh, right,” Rey mumbles as Kylo pulls her away from her wandering thoughts, and reaches into the pockets of her coat to dig around for the keys.

“I’m assuming you got this from my mother?” he asks, taking the jumble of keys from her and easily identifying the two needed for the front door. God, this really is his grandmother’s house. And– _mother_. She’s spoken to Kylo’s _mother_.

“Oh my god, everything makes so much sense now,” she realizes out loud. “I kept asking myself why the hell a senator would let us investigate her mother’s house for some random paranormal investigation podcast, but this isn’t just a random podcast, it’s _her son’s_ podcast.”

Kylo turns back to frown at her. “No, it’s not. It’s your podcast. I’m just the party pooper, remember?”

Rey rolls her eyes and takes his hand as they walk past the threshold. “You’re not _just_ the party pooper. You’re our overqualified, stubborn ghost-mythbuster.”

His lips quirk at that, and it almost feels like they’re just walking into one of their homes after a long day, especially when Kylo casually drops his bag to the ground and kicks off his shoes.

“You’re… comfortable here,” Rey says, taking in her surroundings. Pictures don’t do this place justice; Kylo has mentioned once or twice that his estranged family comes from money, but she’d never imagined something on this scale.

“Used to come here as a kid,” Kylo reveals with a shrug, and leads her into the living room. It’s funny, the fact that she’s learned more about his past in the last ten minutes than she has in the last ten months. “And I ain’t afraid of no ghosts,” he adds over his shoulder, and Rey laughs at the reference.

“Can’t be afraid of what you haven’t seen _yet_ ,” she retorts as they go around turning on lights and exploring the first floor.

“Can’t be afraid of what doesn’t exist,” he amends, a familiar back and forth between them at this point. Rey’s pretty sure Finn once showed her a fan-made compilation of all the times they’ve had this exchange.

“We’ll see,” Rey hums, and leaves it at that.

* * *

To his credit, Kylo doesn’t really rub it in her face when the night passes without incident.

“I’m just saying,” he shrugs as they pack up their belongings, having spent the night in the room he’d claimed as his back when he was a child, “if her spirit really is here, don’t you think she would’ve revealed herself to either me or my mother by now? Her _family_?”

“But you’re not the reason she’s here,” Rey reminds him, holding up the file. It contains more personal information than most of the others, but Rey has to believe that Sir Kenobi didn’t just pull a tragic love story out of thin air.

“If she’s waiting for _him_ , she’s going to be stuck here for a very, very long time,” Kylo mutters darkly as he zips up his bag. “Ready to go?”

“I guess,” she sighs reluctantly, casting her eyes out the window one last time. The balcony is somewhere above them, but even a trip there last night hadn’t yielded anything. Time to call it, then. At least they’ll have plenty of material for the episode thanks to Kylo’s revelation. “My stuff’s already downstairs,” Rey adds for the audience’s sake as she slings her bag over one shoulder.

Kylo smirks at her. “Good. Let’s go, then.”

They make one last round of the house, checking that all the doors are shut and lights are off. A caretaker comes by once every two weeks, according to Leia, but other than that the house has been empty for years. It seems like such a waste, a sentiment she’d expressed to Kylo late last night, when they – she – finally gave up for the night.

 _You know, my grandparents were married here,_ he’d informed her. _Maybe someday…_

And they’d left it at that.

Now, she watches as Kylo locks up behind them and finds herself smiling at him.

“What?” he asks, giving her a smile of his own.

“Nothing,” Rey shrugs, already planning to leave this part on the cutting room floor. “Just thinking about someday.”

He takes her hand, brings it to his lips. “Sounds like a good idea,” Kylo murmurs, and Rey leans in for a quick kiss before they head back down to her car.

“So,” he asks as they get into the car, easily slipping back into his Dr. Ren persona. “ _Now_ will you admit that ghosts aren’t real?”

“I’ll admit that I haven’t captured evidence of one _yet_ ,” Rey sniffs, “but that doesn’t mean anything. The ancient Greeks couldn’t fully prove that the Earth is round, but that didn’t make them wrong.”

“That’s not… Rey, that’s not even the same–” He gives up with a sign, pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration. “One day, you’ll see.”

“One day _you’ll_ see,” she parrots back at him with a grin as she begins to back out of the driveway. “Really, Kylo, if something can’t be proven either way then shouldn’t you keep an open mind about it? Isn’t that just good, impartial science? How can you be so sure–”

A sudden death grip around her wrist shuts her up, and Rey steps on the brake as she turns to Kylo. “What is it?” she asks, slightly worried at the look on his face but not enough to bite back a teasing comment. “You look like you’ve just seen a–”

“Rey,” he whispers without turning to look at her. He raises his free hand to point at something, and Rey notes with growing concern that he’s shaking. “Rey, _look._ ”

She follows his hand, looks out over the lake and up, up, up at–

“ _Oh_.”

There, on the balcony, is his grandmother.

And they watch on as a man who can only be her husband materializes behind her, pulls her into his arms and swings her around in unmistakable, infectious joy.

When she turns back to Kylo and Rey, the smile on her face is anything but sad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gods above _and_ below, what have I done?
> 
> This is 2700 words. That's nearly three ficlets. THREE. Someone send help, because clearly I need an intervention or something.
> 
> I'm beginning to think I should've saved this idea for a proper one-shot or maybe even a three-parter, but oh well. Here it is. I hope you liked it. Thanks for reading as always, and please don't hesitate to leave a comment!


	24. Rasasvada

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **DAY TWENTY-FOUR: RASASVADA**  
>  (n.) the taste of bliss in the absence of all thoughts  
> For anyone who supports #SaveBenSolo2k19: here’s a post-IX canon-verse ficlet where he finally gets some peace and quiet for once.

“You sure this piece of junk can make it to Coruscant?” Finn asks, rapping his knuckles against the ramp as he regards the Falcon with a dubious frown.

Ben chuckles under his breath, shakes his head as Rey zeroes in on a nearby twig and thwacks her friend’s arm with it. “Oi,” she scowls at Finn, resuming her journey up the ramp with a crate of supplies in her arms. “That’s _our_ piece of junk you’re talking about, and she’ll be flying long after your fancy command shuttle’s been stripped for parts. Right, Ben?”

He shouldn’t, he really shouldn’t, but… “Sorry, sweetheart. I’m with Finn on this one.”

Rey lets out a theatrical gasp of betrayal as Ben brushes past her with two crates of his own, and he turns back at the door to watch her shoot Finn a glare. “Drop it,” she warns him.

“Oh, like how this ship is going to drop out of the sky?” her friend retorts with barely restrained laughter that quickly turns into a yelp when the twig floats into the air again and starts chasing after him. “All right, all right, I’m going!” Finn laughs as he scurries off towards Poe and their shuttle. “See you on Coruscant!”

“We’ll beat you there!” Rey calls after him as she steps into the Falcon and allows Ben to take her crate with a smile of thanks. He ventures further into the ship to add their three crates to the small pile they’ve been tasked with transporting; unnecessary, now that the war is over and they’re headed to prosperous Coruscant, but no one had had the heart to let perfectly good supplies go to waste after their years of war and scarcity.

When he rejoins Rey in the cockpit, she’s already claimed the captain’s seat for herself and is busy keying in the coordinates for their destination.

Ben slips into the co-pilot’s chair without a word of protest and watches Rey prepare for take-off. Coruscant awaits, and with it the impossible task of rebuilding and maintaining peace, the endless work his mother had dedicated her life to – just like her parents before her, just like her son after her. Is this it for him, then? Is this his life? One uphill battle after another, one master after another – the Jedi, First Order, Resistance, Republic…

A small hand settles over his own, curled into a white-knuckled fist in his lap without him realizing. “Hey,” Rey says gently, turning towards him. “We don’t have to go.”

He automatically rebels against the thought. “Of course we do. Everyone’s expecting us.” Him. Everyone’s expecting him, as well they should, to build, to mend, to _atone_. And he’s willing to do this, has dedicated himself to the only path left available to him if he and Rey want a future worth having, so why does it feel like he’s flying to their final battle all over again?

“We don’t have to go right _now_ ,” Rey points out, lacing their fingers together. She looks at him, allows him to search her eyes, and Ben knows that she’d follow him to the ends of the galaxy even if it meant they could never come back again.

Which is precisely why he pushes his dread to the back of his mind and quiets his thoughts for her sake. “Let’s just go, sweetheart. The Republic, your friends, the galaxy, they’re all–”

“The galaxy can wait,” she declares firmly, no less gentle for the iron will in her voice. “ _You_ come first, Ben. Now that I can finally put you first, you come first. Always. No matter what.”

She brushes against his mind, tentatively seeking entry, and Ben allows her in so that her warmth can unfurl and fill every dark corner of his soul, so that she can wrap herself around him like a layer of armor against the galaxy. “I’m supposed to help Dameron rebuild,” he reminds her, a weak protest.

“Ben,” Rey sighs, leans over and wraps her arms around him. “How can you build the future when you’re still haunted by the past?”

He tips forward, rests his head on her shoulder; it’s the only answer he can give her, the only answer she needs.

Rey smiles, runs a hand through his hair as she reaches for her comm.

“Hey, Finn? Change of plans. Looks like Ben and I are going on a honeymoon after all.”

* * *

Ahch-To.

She’s brought him to Ahch-To, perhaps the single most haunted planet this side of the galaxy, to escape the ghosts of his past.

Never let it be said that his wife doesn’t have one hell of a sense of humor.

Rey laughs as the thought escapes him, leads him down the ramp with an arm wrapped around his waist. “That’s not what this place is about, you know.”

“What?”

“Ghosts. Regrets. Echoes of the past,” Rey shrugs, and if he didn’t know better he’d say she’s plucking thoughts right from his mind. But this is Rey, Rey who knows him better than he knows himself, Rey who knows secrets the Force hadn’t seen fit to share until her. “I know it’s all you can feel right now, but give it some time. There’s more here.”

Oh, there’s definitely more.

There’s the hut Rey picks out for them, which reminds him of the one his uncle tried to kill him in.

There’s his uncle himself, lingering wisps of his Force signature threaded through the island’s.

There’s the call, the darkness that beckons to him so much like Snoke once did.

“Why?” Ben asks on their fourth night, curled into Rey’s side with a heavy arm slung across her waist as she combs her fingers through his hair. “Why did you bring me here?”

Rey is his only source of comfort on this island, his only beacon in the darkness, and yet she’s the one who pushes him closer and closer to the dark, gaping hole in the earth every morning, the one who makes him retrace his uncle’s steps and meditate where he became one with the Force.

“Did you know that he cut himself off from the Force?” she tells him instead of offering him an answer. “He knew where he’d gone wrong, he knew what the way forward was, but he also knew that he wasn’t the one meant for that path.”

“If not the great Luke Skywalker,” Ben mutters into the folds of her nightshirt, “then who?”

She pulls herself up against the stone wall, waits for him to look up at her. “Us,” Rey says, as if it’s as simple as that. “It’s our path, Ben. Together. My Light and your Dark, my Dark and your Light – that’s how we’re going to move forward. That’s the future we’re going to build, so that it lasts this time.”

He wants to scoff at whatever bantha shit his uncle’s filled her head with, wants to despair at the shining, misplaced hope in her eyes, but… “Balance,” Ben hears himself whispering instead, a seed of hope planted in his mind by the island itself.

“Balance,” Rey agrees with a smile, and leans down to press their lips together.

Blood still rushes in his ears whenever he kisses his wife, his heartbeat still picks up so fast that it becomes a _thud-thud-thud_ that drowns out nearly everything except for the demands of the Light, the whispers of the Dark–

But this time, this time it all comes together: the Light and the Dark, Rey and him, his love and his fear and his hopes and his regrets, all bound together in the Force until they become one single, sustained note that rings out into the night, fading slowly into silence and nothingness.

And in that silence, in the space between nothing and everything, Ben Solo finally knows peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m not exactly sure what this is, but I don’t hate it so... ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> I know the prompt pretty much screams “post-coital bliss”, but that felt a bit sacrilegious to me so I went with this instead. Well, that and my continued inability to smut. If you’d like to go ahead and assume that the last few paragraphs are my very flowery and indirect way of saying they got it on... sure, why not? But believe it or not, that actually wasn’t my intention when I wrote it.
> 
> However you choose to look at this ficlet, I hope you enjoyed it! Thanks for reading, and please don’t hesitate to leave a comment!


	25. Gezellig

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **DAY TWENTY-FIVE: GEZELLIG**  
>  (adj.) cozy, nice, inviting, pleasant, comfortable; connoting time spent with loved ones or togetherness after a long separation  
> For... everyone, really. This past year has been such a delight thanks to all of you, and you give me all the warm and fuzzies just as Rey and Ben do. So to close out the collection, here’s a super pointless and fluffy modern AU where Rey misses her first Christmas with Ben as a married couple... or does she?

“Happy Christmas, baby!” Rey says with a smile, using up what little energy she has left to greet her husband.

The image of Ben wobbles a bit as she kicks off her heels and perches herself on the foot of her bed, but his smile is unfaltering. “ _Merry_ Christmas to you too,” he replies teasingly, and even through the shitty speakers on her phone, his familiar, beloved voice immediately chases away all the tension in her body. “How’d it go?”

She leans forward and sets her phone on the dresser opposite her bed so that they can keep talking while she takes down her hair and removes her accessories. “Unbelievably well,” Rey beams, wishing she weren’t too tired to muster up enough excitement for her big news. “Fifty million, Ben. DJ’s giving us fifty million dollars!”

“Rey, that’s incredible!” Ben exclaims with a wide grin, and a part of her aches because she knows, she just knows, that if she were there with him or he were here with her right now, he’d be sweeping her off her feet and twirling her around in celebration. “I knew you could do it, sweetheart,” he says instead, and the pride in his voice almost makes up for it.

“I didn’t,” Rey admits as she takes off her earrings. “Up until the last minute I actually thought this whole trip was going to be a huge waste of time and I’d missed Christmas with everyone for no fucking reason. He invited me to breakfast with his family first thing in the morning and insisted I stay all day, but refused to talk business at all. It wasn’t until I was ready to leave that he led me to his study and handed over the check.”

“Just like that?”

Incredulity infuses Rey’s voice with near-hysterical laughter. “Just like that! I couldn’t even believe it at first, I just stared at him like a goldfish or something. I mean… Ben, my god, _fifty million dollars,_ ” she marvels, the amount hitting her all over again. “We were never going to run out of money, not with Maz’s shares and your grandmother’s foundation, but just think of everything we can do now.”

Expanding is at the top of the list, of course, but now they get to fix up the existing homes and give the children more than just the basics, maybe even help the older kids through college once they age out–

“I can’t wait to hear everything I know you’re thinking of right now,” Ben’s voice, warm and supportive as always, coaxes her out of her thoughts and back into the present, “but I think you should get some rest first, sweetheart. It’s been a long couple of days for you.”

“It really has,” Rey sighs as she lets her bun down and combs her fingers through her braids. She’s barely slept since she received the phone call from DJ two days ago and immediately hopped on the first flight to Canto Bight despite her reluctance to miss her first ever Christmas with Ben as newlyweds. But he’d given her the push she needed, as he always does, and now Rey can’t bring herself to regret any of it – not with the check from Canto Casinos nestled safely in her bag. “I can’t wait to get home to you,” she says, offering Ben a sleepy smile as he watches her scrub at her tired eyes.

“Soon,” he assures her as Rey picks up her phone and brings it closer.

“Not soon enough,” she counters with a sigh, thinking of the seven-hour flight standing in the way of their reunion. But at least this time tomorrow she’ll be in her own bed – and more importantly, in her husband’s arms. That thought alone motivates her to get a move on; the sooner she packs and goes to bed, the sooner she’ll be on her way home to Ben. “I’ll call you before I board?”

“I’ll be waiting,” Ben promises, and it’s funny how even after all these years her heart still warms at the realization that someone’s waiting for her, that someone wants her home.

Rey grins despite her exhaustion. “I love you,” she tells him, the words bubbling up her throat and past her lips as they always do when Ben’s involved.

“I love you too,” he replies, saying it with his mouth and his smile and his eyes. “Now go get some rest. Good night, sweetheart.”

Coruscant is three hours ahead of Canto Bight, and it suddenly hits Rey how much later it is for Ben, how much more tired he must be after a day of hosting their family and friends and then staying up just to wait for her call. “Good night,” she says in return, and Ben gives her one final smile before he hangs up.

“See you soon,” Rey whispers to her phone, and then drags herself into the shower.

* * *

Thanks to a one-hour delay, it’s well past five by the time Rey makes her way off the plane and towards Ben.

She doesn’t do anything as over-the-top as run to him and jump into his arms, but only because Ben meets her halfway and pulls her close before she gets the chance to do so. They’ve always been tactile, two touch-starved kids from such different yet equally deprived backgrounds, and being apart for even three short days is hell.

“Hi,” Rey whispers as Ben squeezes the air out of her lungs, craning her neck to plant a kiss on his jaw. “I missed you.”

“Missed you too, sweetheart,” Ben mumbles into her crown before he pulls back and meets her for a proper kiss. “Ready to go home?”

Rey rests her head on his shoulder with a sigh. “Home sounds good,” she murmurs, taking a moment to relish in the warmth of her husband’s embrace before she steps back and picks up her forgotten carry-on. “Lead the–”

It’s only then that she notices what he’s wearing.

“Ben… is that an ugly sweater?”

Oh, it is. It really, really is. The maroon of the sweater sits nicely enough against Ben’s pale skin, but clashes hideously with the thick stripe of green across his chest and the cartoonish, brightly-colored elves and reindeer decorating the lower half of the sweater, complete with actual tiny bells sewn onto the elves’ pointy hats and around the reindeer’s necks.

Never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined Ben wearing something like this – and in public, no less.

“The ugliest, according to Rose,” he says with a shrug, as if it doesn’t physically pain him to be seen in this monstrosity. “There’s one for you too, I left it in the car.”

“Oh my god, did she make these?” Rey asks as Ben takes her bag and leads the way to the car. “How was Christmas, by the way? Did dinner go okay? I’m so sorry I left you to handle it on your own, it’s not fair that you had to deal with your family and my friends–”

“Hey,” Ben stops her, catches her hand and gives it a squeeze. “What’s not fair was DJ waiting until the worst possible time to get back to you. Don’t apologize.”

Rey smiles at him until Ben ducks his head, and then she leans in to kiss his cheek. “You’re too good to me,” she murmurs, and settles into his side with a sigh as Ben wraps his free hand around her waist. Walking together slows down their pace considerably, but it’s not like they have anywhere to be other than in each other’s arms.

By the time they get to the car, the winter sun is well on its way to dipping below the horizon. “Here,” Ben says as he tosses a lumpy package at her. “Put this on.”

She rips through a truly garish print of neon-colored elves to find a homemade monstrosity of her very own, and quickly swaps out her own boring sweater for one with snowmen and Santas instead, complete with mismatched buttons for Frosty’s eyes and squishy, padded belly for each Santa. Rey snaps a picture for Rose while Ben loads her carry-on into the back, and sends her friend a quick thank-you note as they pull out of the parking lot and hit the road.

“I want a picture of us together when we get home,” she tells Ben as they inch along the predictably crowded highway. “It still counts as Christmas, right?”

“It can be Christmas for as long as you like, sweetheart,” Ben says, eyes intent on traffic. He reaches for his phone after a minute and starts tapping away with a little more force than necessary.

“Bad news?” Rey asks after a beat, frowning at the way Ben jumps in his seat and discreetly angles his screen away from her. She’d assumed that he was looking up traffic reports, but she’s never known Ben to be jumpy – aside from the whole week he was planning to propose to her. And the three days it took him to build up the nerve to ask her to move in with him. Not to mention the whole month between their tipsy make-out and him finally asking her out.

Oh.

Rey leans back in her seat and bites down on her lower lip to fight a smile. Now that they’re together and married she can’t quite think of anything else for him to surprise her with, but there’s no mistaking when her husband’s up to something.

“Um, yeah,” Ben says after a telling pause, scrambling for words like the terrible liar that he is. “Traffic. It’s bad. Looks like it might take us more than an hour to get home.”

It’s a good enough cover, until they drive past a car with a flat just ten minutes later and traffic miraculously clears up.

“I thought traffic was bad?” Rey can’t help but ask, careful to keep her teasing tone in check.

Ben tightens his grip on the wheel. “You know how it is. These reports are never accurate.”

Rey turns to hide her smile. “Right,” she says, and leaves it at that. She catches Ben heaving a silent sigh of relief in the reflection on her mirror and debates whether she should spend the rest of the drive trying to pry his secret from him.

But knowing Ben, it’s probably something amazing and wonderful that he’s put a lot of time and consideration into, and Rey wouldn’t want to ruin her surprise for him. So instead she turns on the radio to fill the silence, and soon enough even Ben’s singing along to Christmas songs.

His phone buzzes insistently with a bunch of incoming messages as they near their apartment. “Do you want me to get that?” Rey asks casually, keeping a close eye on his reaction.

Ben doesn’t disappoint; he immediately swipes his phone out of her reach and drops it between his legs. “No!” he says a little too vehemently, only to turn to her with a look of apology. “I mean, it’s nothing that can’t wait, don’t worry about it.”

“Okay then,” Rey shrugs, smiling to let him know that all is forgiven.

Could he have asked someone to set up dinner for them? It’s exactly the kind of romantic gesture he’s always been so fond of. Or maybe he’d gone ahead and picked out a puppy from the shelter like they’ve been talking about for a while now. His parents are still in town for two more days and Ben knows how much she’s missed them; could Han and Leia be joining them for dinner?

Soon enough, they’re out of the car and on their way up, and Ben spends the entire elevator ride tapping out frantic messages to his accomplice – or accomplices.

He puts his phone away and takes her hand with a smile when they reach their floor, and the familiar sight of their hallway hits Rey with such comfort and warmth that for a moment there she doesn’t even care about the surprise; she’s just happy to be home.

But then there’s a familiar, booming laugh coming from the vicinity of their apartment, and Ben stops dead in his tracks.

“Shut up, she’s going to hear you!” Finn’s unmistakable voice hisses a little too loudly, and Rey can’t help the snort that escapes her at the irony of it all.

Ben turns to her with a sigh. “Surprise,” he deadpans as the blank look on his face transforms into a wry grin.

Rey stands up on her tiptoes to kiss him the way she couldn’t back in the airport, wraps her arms around his neck and lets him swallow her moans until she needs air.

“Thank you, baby,” she whispers against his lips as they catch their breath. “I love you.”

“Love you too,” Ben says, and gives her a final peck before he leads her down the hall and unlocks their front door, which swings open to reveal their family and friends gathered in their living room.

“Merry Christmas, Rey!”

* * *

“Time for charades!” Rose declares happily after the last of the dishes have been put away and everyone’s settled in with a cup of cocoa.

“Let’s partner up,” Finn suggests, snaking an arm around his girlfriend while everyone else more or less agrees and begins to pair up.

“Never did get this game,” Han grumbles from his spot on the overstuffed armchair. Leia gets up from her perch next to him and pats his hand consolingly.

“I know,” she says. “Which is why I’m pairing up with Poe.”

Han’s betrayed protests are drowned out by the room’s laughter, and Rey sighs as Ben’s chest rumbles with a chuckle of his own. They’ve been cuddled up in the loveseat since the end of dinner, warm and drowsy and content just watching their friends and family bustling about and making themselves at home.

“C’mon, kid,” Han finally says with a reluctant sigh as he approaches Luke. “Looks like it’s you and me again.”

“Just like old times,” Luke beams, and promptly launches into a retelling of some adventure or another.

Rey turns to Ben and smiles when she finds him already looking at her.

“Thank you for this,” she says once again.

And once again, Ben simply shrugs and says, “It’s nothing.”

“Hey,” Rey protests lightly, sitting up to properly look at him. “It’s not _nothing_ , Ben. You don’t even like Christmas.”

“But you do,” he points out.

“And you hate having people over,” she reminds him.

“But they’re your people,” Ben says. “Okay, _our_ people,” he amends after a pointed look from her.

Rey reaches up and curves her hand along his jaw, her heart fluttering when Ben automatically leans into her touch. “I know you would’ve preferred having me to yourself. But you did this instead, and it means a lot to me, okay? So stop saying it’s nothing.”

“Fine,” Ben sighs, leaning down to press their foreheads together. “You’re welcome.”

They part after a quick kiss, and Rey settles her head on his shoulder once more while the others discuss whether the dining table or the living room is more suited for charades.

“Rey?”

“Hmm?” she asks without looking up at him.

“You know I’d do anything for you, right?” Ben asks, prompting her to turn to him. “I just want to give you everything,” he says almost hesitantly, shyly, and all Rey can see is the boy who thought she was way out of his league and completely panicked when she said yes to a date, the man who insisted she deserves better but vowed to stay with her anyway, her husband who’s always, always holding out his heart with shaky hands as if it’s an offering not worthy of her, as if she’s ever going to say no to him.

Rey looks at the family he’s given her, the home they’ve built together, and turns back to him with a smile.

“You already have,” she says, and surges up to kiss him before he can protest as if he’s not enough, as if he’s not everything to her. When she finally feels his lips curve into a smile against hers, Rey pulls back just enough to look her husband in the eye.

“Happy Christmas, Ben.”

He smiles at her, dark eyes shining with the same joy she’d seen in him all the times she’d said yes to him and them and this life together, this home and belonging and love they’ve found in each other.

“Merry Christmas, sweetheart.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not that happy with the ending... but then again, I never am.
> 
> Here we are, guys. Can you believe it? I certainly can’t. When I set out to write 25 Reylo ficlets in 25 days, I figured that I’d most likely end up 0 for 3. And while it’s true that I didn’t end up writing 25 ficlets (I’d be shocked if even half of them are less than 1000 words) and it took me way longer than 25 days (this last piece is actually exactly 25 days late, can you believe it?), I did somehow manage to write 25 Reylo stories - all thanks to you guys. 
> 
> Not only did your endless support and encouragement keep me going, it also taught me a bunch of valuable lessons on what I can achieve, what my limits are, and why I shouldn’t be so harsh on myself. 
> 
> So thank you, thank you, thank you, and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this collection even half as much as I’ve enjoyed working on it. <3


End file.
